428 REPORTS ON THE STATE OP SCIENCE. — 1919. 



of Mr. Gattie's scheme, or some genius arises in the railway world who will 

 reorganise and think out afresh on an enirely new basis, methods of railway 

 operation. There is no sign whatever of such a genius at the moment, and 

 Government control or other form of nationaJisation will as in other cases tend 

 to stifle progress and discourage valuable inventione. 



The coming of the new road transport era will, I fear, be hampered by. the 

 threatened establishment of a Government monopoly of transport. But even 

 governments and ministries, however bureaucratic, must bow in the course of 

 time to facts. As a general rule, it may be said that railways tend to concen- 

 trate population, while the growth of road transport tende to diifuse population. 

 Riiilways naturally dislike being bothered with small country stations, and the 

 expense of providing small centres of production with expensive stations, staffs, 

 .'iidings, etc.j is often not justified from a purely, financial point of view. Road 

 transport, on the other hand, being available wherever there are roads, good, 

 indifferent, or even bad, can go anywhere. In Normandy and Brittany before 

 the war, from farm lane to farm lane, from small holding to small holding, and 

 from village to village, mechanical road transport picked iip produce and left 

 goods in return, with an ease and cheapness impossible to railways. Light rail- 

 ways are from their fixed nature and high cost of operation inferior to mechanical 

 road transport for country districts. Road transport alone possesses the advan- 

 tage of carriage from door to door without intermediate handling, no time-table 

 is necessary, no expensive junctions, no signalling, no platforms, no expensive 

 bureaucratic staffs, and the amount of capital required to start a local road 

 transport company is represented by a few hundred pounds compared with 

 Inmdreds of thousands required for railway — even light railway — development. 

 The number of tons per hour which can be conveyed over a good main road 

 compared with the tonnage over even a double line of railway, is greater, and 

 from point of origin to destination and faster. In short, railways will have to 

 meet the competition of road transport more and more, and it ie interesting 

 to note that Mr. Robert Williams, Secretary of the National Union of Railway- 

 men and National Transport Federation, in an article in a recent book called 

 ' The Limits of State Industrial Control,' foresees and appears to regret that road 

 transport competition will be severe in regard to railways, and therefore dis- 

 advantageous to his union. ' If the railways are nationalised,' he says, ' the 

 State will be faced with the competition of road transport,' and he deprecates 

 the possibility of this occurring. In other words, natural and scientific evolution 

 in regard to transport is to be barred, in order that railways may be run for the 

 benefit of certain unions or of a theory of State control. The interests of the 

 producer and consumer are to be ignored, that abstract entity, the State, is to 

 operate if necessary at a loss, and the development of competition is to be limited, 

 if necessary, by law. Further discussion of this aspect of the question would be 

 out of place on a scientific occasion such as this. 



I cannot conclude my address without some reference to the romantic, poetical 

 and artistic aspects of the road. In the Old Testament the road is always the 

 symbol of something beautiful and useful. Throughout the Old and New 

 Testaments the most famous and moving incidents have all taken place in or 

 near the road — roads which we picture to ourselves from youth up. It is along 

 the road that we go to be christened, married and buried. Roads winding over 

 hills and through dales are not only means of travelling but emblems of one of 

 the conquests by man over natural forces, and roads over the face of the world 

 show forth all the extraordinary intelligence and industry of the human race. 

 It was Ruskin who held that the making of a road was the finest work and 

 monument which a man could leave behind him. If we may parallel the well- 

 known saying that ' the man is worthy of his country who makes two blades of 

 grass grow where one grew before,' one might say to-day that he who makes 

 roads twice as good as they, have been, who makes them fit for the transport of his 

 country, is as great a benefactor as he who produces more out of the soil. There 

 is something wonderful but indefinable in the charm of a great road which can 

 never be understood by those who have not felt it. It suggests adventure ; it 

 stimulates imagination ; it brings at eventide the idea of homecoming, of repose 

 after work. Coeval with the earliest civilisation and coetemal with mankind, 

 roads in the future will be valued more and more by the community. Roads will 



