4O2 History of Inland Transport 



deals with transport and other arrangements for mobilisa- 

 tion. 



Before leaving this branch of the subject I may, perhaps, 

 be excused if I look still further afield, and turn, for a moment, 

 from what railways have done for the nation to a few examples 

 of what they are doing for the Empire. 



In Australia the railways allowed of settlements established 

 on the coast-line of a continent (covering three million square 

 miles) gradually stretching far inland, utilising for agricultural 

 purposes great areas of land that must otherwise have remained 

 little better than barren wastes. 



Canada, as we know it to-day, owes her existence to the 

 railways. " Without them," said Mr E. T. Powell, in a paper 

 read before the Royal Colonial Institute on February 14, 1911, 

 " the vast dominion which we are proud to call the Canadian 

 Empire would have remained a loose aggregate of scattered 

 agricultural communities. Quebec and Alberta must have 

 known as much of each other as do Donegal and Kamschatka. 

 ... A few thousand miles of steel rail . . . have saved 

 Canada for the Empire. . . . Every year they draw the 

 Dominion into closer cohesion as a self-governing unit, while 

 at the same time they cement it more firmly into the Imperial 

 fabric." 



In South Africa the railways have rendered invaluable 

 service from the point of view alike of trade, of commerce, 

 of colonial expansion, and of Imperial policy. Rhodesia, 

 especially, will have been indebted to her railways for much 

 of the future greatness to which she hopes to attain ; and no 

 one would yet venture to limit the possible results of the 

 Cape-to-Cairo line, when that bold undertaking shall at last 

 have been completed. 



Less generally known, perhaps, is the story of what the rail- 

 way is doing both for the Empire and for civilisation on the 

 West Coast of Africa. 



Little more than a dozen years ago no railways at all had 

 been constructed there, and most of the colonies were in a 

 more or less disturbed condition, even if they had not been 

 the scene of successive massacres, of sanguinary wars, of much 

 expenditure thereon, and of human sacrifices in districts 

 steeped in slavery, barbarism and superstition. 



This was especially the case on the Gold Coast, where the 



