.toe 



i)isc.()Vi;i<v 



lion. Init the Govoninunt is Jilnady hnavily subsidising 

 i,'(K)ils and passenger traffic by air, and \vc are inclined 

 lo think tliat the newly proposed credit would be more 

 \ .iliiably devoted to railway extensions. The schemes 

 iibmitted by the London TratTic Combine for the 

 ■ xtension of our capital's underground railways should 

 l>rovc a great benefit when put into oj>eration, but, as 

 we have noted, they are of almost entirely local 

 importance. The electrification of our railways, plans 

 for which were proposed by Sir Eric Geddes some time 

 .igo, would serve eventually as a fillip to our home 

 trade. Yet it seems to us that the linking-up of our 

 railways, by a Channel tunnel, with those of the Con- 

 tinent would have a far greater effect upon our national 

 prosperity than any other single scheme, vastly pro- 

 moting, as it would, our import and export trades. 



***** 

 For such a project we have the men, the material, 

 and, we hope, a willingness on the part of the Govern- 

 ment to back it with a portion of the proposed credit for 

 commercial enterprises. Is any capitalist or any body 

 of capitalists willing to come forward with the money ? 

 The time is not by any means inopportune to urge 

 once more that at least a start might be made with the 

 project. The objections are that the risk is great and 

 that no return upon such an investment is possible under 

 at least ten years. Engineers, however, have told us 

 that the project is a practicable one, and it is certain 

 that the eventual financial return would be enormous. 

 The idea that the tunnel would destroy Great Britain's 

 position as an island and render her more liable to attack 

 during war is now surely negligible. We are already 

 part of Eurojje, and in the next great war the menace, 

 for example, of air attacks will a thousand times out- 

 weigh that of one through a couple of tubes no wider 

 than the funnels of a big liner and capable of being 

 lilockcd with the greatest ease, especially if the sugges- 

 tion formerly in favour were adopted, of exposing a 

 stretch of the approach to the tunnel to naval fire by 

 putting the line on the front of the cliffs. 



***** 



One is naturally tempted to consider the more 

 distant possibilities brought within our reach by 

 twenty-five miles or so of tubing. London, for instance, 

 would be placed in direct railway communication with 

 far eastern Europe, with Bukarest, Constantinople, and 

 Athens, not to mention all the capitals of Western 

 Europe. During the war the Germans, by cutting 

 through the Taurus mountains in Asia Minor, connected 

 Constantinople by railway with Aleppo and Nisibin, 

 while the British connected Cairo with Jaffa and 

 Jerusalem, and in Mesopotamia built a line from Basra 

 to Tekrit. With some readjustment of the lines in 

 Palestine and southern Syria, the laying out of some 



two hundred miles of permanent way to connect Tekrit 

 and Nisibin on the northern frontier of Mesopotamia, 

 and a settlement of the present Grjeco-Turkish war, 

 Constantinople could be put into railway communica- 

 tion with Cairo, and with Baghdad and Basra. Despite 

 conflicting interests, we expect that all thc-sc things 

 will have been done by the time the Channel tunnel is 

 finished, and we shall be able to tra\el by train from 

 London to Cairo and Baghdad. It is just possible, 

 too, that within the next ten years the Cape to Cairo 

 line m.ay take material shape, though it has to be laid 

 through very formidable natural obstacles ; while an 

 alternative route from London to the Cape would be 

 opened up b\' the Gibraltar tunnel scheme, and the 

 extension of the railways along the northern coasts of 

 Africa. 



But it will be said these are merely romantic specula- 

 tions. The great value of the tunnel would lie in the 

 elimination of loading and unloading at Channel ports, 

 and the immense resultant sjjeeding up of freight 

 between London or the manufacturing towns of this 

 country and the capitals and manufacturing towns of 

 Europe. * * * * ^ 



We are glad to see that someone ' has at last expressed 

 a reasonable attitude towards Psycho-analysis. Thanks 

 largely to its successful application to shell-shock cases, 

 it took the public by storm towards the end of the war 

 and thereafter, though it had been widely practised and 

 discussed in central and southern Europe for ten years 

 before the war. Other reasons for its popularity were 

 that it was an easy science for the layman to under- 

 stand, and the charlatan to exploit, it explained one's 

 indi\-idual foibles in a pleasant way, and it allowed a 

 more open discussion of sexual questions than had 

 hitherto been considered " proper." Of course the 

 Press took it up with gusto, and by making copy out of 

 the extremists' theories did great harm to the reputa- 

 tion of the science. A reaction, largely develop)ed in 

 the correspondence columns of the daily Press, set in, 

 and abuse was hurled at the whole school of our psycho- 

 analysts by sceptical doctors and other persons who had 

 been led to believe that the new science consisted ot 

 the frankly sexual and materialistic interpretations of 

 Freud's more extreme followers, and that in the hands 

 of charlatans it was undermining our national morality. 

 ***** 



It is true, as the editor of Psyche admits, that " some 

 of Freud's followers, as is the custom of disciples, have 

 carried certain of his views further and have stated 

 them more dogmatically than he himself would care 

 to do, and there can be little doubt that he himself has 

 unnecessarily alienated the sjTnpathy of many students 



' The editor of Psyche in the Editorial of the October 

 number. 



