5 SEPTEMBER 1908, Page 3

Mr.W. M. Acworth, the President of the Economic Science and

Statistics Section, read a most interesting paper on the State in relation to railways. Mr. Acworth is claimed by the followers of Mr. Lloyd George and Mr Winston Churchill as practically lending support to the movement in favour of the nationalisation of railways. But while admitting that competition was a weapon which was at this moment breaking up in our hands, and that the general tendency was towards a considerable development of executive Government control, he was careful to add that hitherto in Anglo-Saxon com- munities neither State ownership nor State control had been over-successful. " The best success had been obtained by relying for control, not on the constable, but on the eventual supremacy of an enlightened public opinion."