be eight miles off and possesses a High Street; and then I went back to Francesca and told her that Glumgold advised Nebsbury-which was cowardly,

Punch.

but one can't spend a lifetime over a fiddle-headed document like that. Anyhow, we folded it up and posted it, and we've heard nothing since.

R. C. Lehmann.

Somewhere in France a chaffinch hatched its eggs and brought up its brood despite the fact that a British gunner had planted a big-bore howitzer, for concealment's sake, beneath the apple tree in which its nest was built, and from time to time discharged his dumpy piece with an explosion rocking the avine cradle so severely that two of the eggs were rolled from the nest, and broken. Somewhere in the English Eastern counties pheasants and other birds were startled out of their sleep at night and protested vehemently, each according to the manner of his kind, at gun-fire, inaudible to the human ear, somewhere in the North Sea, or at a Zeppelin passing at such distance that the human ear was equally unable to hear its monstrous engines. There seems a strange inconsistency in the birds' behavior, in the one case so extraordinarily regardless of an absolutely catastrophic uproar and upheaval, in the other hyper-sensitive to a degree that borders on the hysterical. Either phenomenon, by itself, is difficult for our human comprehension; that both should be exhibited by the same creatures seems almost beyond belief. Yet we have to believe it, if only on the quia impossibile principle. It is a story too unlikely for invention. Besides, the cloud of witnesses is too dense to be disputed. If all at the front have not seen the chaffinch nesting on the cannon's mouth, they have at least heard the lark's song in the sky during intervals of the most ear-splitting bombardment; and for the other side

of the story there is hardly a gamekeeper or woodman in East Anglia who cannot bear you testimony to the disturbance of the birds in woodland and covert when no reason for their outery was humanly audible.

The first question that we may ask is whether the birds themselves, thus roused from sleep, the pheasants to crow, and the blackbirds to give their cackling alarm cry, were actually startled by anything that they heard. They may have heard the distant bombardment or engine throb, but there is some reason to doubt it, or at least reason to doubt whether this was the real occasion, even if it did stir their auditory nerves, of their manifest alarm. In the first place, we have no particular reason to think them so very much more keen of hearing than ourselves, and, in the second place, we may recall a thousand and one cases of their sleeping calmly of nights in the midst of a din that would surely send sleep far from human senses unless drugged by a narcotic or dulled by abnormal weariness. Birds roosting in the hedgerows do not wake and cry just because a noisy motor passes along it in the night. They may wake, indeed, but they do not cry out to tell one another about it. Almost certainly it is uneasiness of quite a different kind that is inspired in them by the distant gun-fire or propeller stroke. Does it not seem tolerably sure that it must be the air vibrations, vibrations affecting them tactily-by the sense of touch rather than by that of hearing? I think so,

And

and it is a theory supported by a personal experience of my own. At Nairn, that delectable little place on the Moray Firth, whither we used to go for golf, you might sometimes be awakened from your beauty sleep, even in the halcyon nights of peace by the ships' gunners at practice, away out at the mouth of the firth. then, if you listened, you heard a notable thing-two things. The guns seemed to be fired at intervals of a minute or two, and at each discharge you heard first the noise of the explosion, and then-an appreciable time, which I should guess at a sixteenth of a minute later-you would hear your window begin to rattle. Unquestionably that rattle was caused by the same discharge that you had heard all those seconds before, and, although its vibration had to pass through the window, or through the little gaps of its sash, before coming to your ears, still it came to you first, and the window rattle only began later. Does it not seem to show the rattle to be caused by a more slowly traveling wave of the air, perhaps by an outer ring of that disturbance of which the ship's cannon was the center? That, certainly, is how it appeared to me, and, presumably, from much other evidence, it would have been possible to be at such distance from the center that the quicker moving wave, which alone could stimulate your hearing nerves, might be spent of sufficient force for you not to know of its existence, while still the slower traveling wave, more towards the circumference of the disturbed circle, might reach a The Westminster Gazette.

thing of the area of a window with sufficient momentum to rattle it quite audibly for you. It is much more wonderful than any fairy tale, and much less credible-but truth seems to be like that.

I do not mean to imply that I expect this to be taken as truth in any demonstrated sense: it is but my own quite unscientific guess at truth. I give it no more value than that. But, assigning it this very limited credit by way of explanation, it is one which it seems possible to carry over, for so much as it is worth, to the business of the sleeping birds who are evidently awakened and alarmed by air waves of which there is much reason to think that they are not conscious through their ears. Evidently, too, it is an air wave different in effect from any sudden upspringing of a breeze in a still night. Their alarm cries show that it appeals to them with a sense of the unfamiliar and the startling. We do not know whether birds such as partridges and grouse, which sleep on the ground, were affected in the same way as the perch roosters, and, unfortunately, their alarm is not generally so vociferous as that of these others. They would not tell us so much about it, even if they were equally frightened. So I venture to offer this as my suggestion by way of explaining and harmonizing what seems at first sight so inexplicable and inconsistent. But I am far from thinking that I have said the last wordvery likely it is not even the right word-about it. I should welcome a better theory.

Horace Hutchinson.

existence in August, 1914, there would have been no attack by Germany on

Belgium or on France. Germany knowing that through the tunnel we could in two or three days pour at least a couple of hundred thousand soldiers into Northeastern France, would have hesitated to attack her Western neighbors. But with no tunnel there she knew that the transport of our Expeditionary Force, in ships threatened with mine and torpedo, must be as it was-a comparatively lengthy and partial business, and that she might, while we were getting ready, strike and succeed.

And again, after the war had started, the immediate and strenuous piercing of the tunnel might by now have resulted in connecting England with France by a secure passage, and have rendered almost nugatory the threat to starve us out by submarine or to impede, by these attacks on our transports and hospital ships, the efficient conduct of the war across the Channel.

For the Britain that emerges from this war, indissolubly knit-for their common safety-with her Allies of Western and Eastern Europe, the Channel Tunnel is a supreme necessity. It must be made. And when it is finished and we can gather together more capital and energy we must supplement it with a more difficult enterprise-a Channel Tunnel connecting either Wales or Southwest Scotland with Ireland.

Unfortunately the projects for the Channel Tunnel formulated in the 'seventies and 'eighties of the nineteenth century and the opening years of the "nineteen hundreds" fell victims to the narrowness of the then military opinion, the lack of perspicaciousness of the War Office, and the laziness of thought and ignorance of geography so characteristic of our politicians. It is true that the Duke of Cambridge, when Commander-in-Chief, favored the project, and that Lord Lansdowne's

Committee Report upset the foolish arguments of old-fashioned field-marshals who still regarded France as the national foe. But Ministers were timid of committing themselves— they had not enough geography to be thrilled at the commercial and political advantages of the Tunnel.

Yet from 1904 onwards it was increasingly clear that the Tunnel was a matter of necessity to both France and Britain. The agreement of that year disposed orobably forever of colonial rivalries between the two great countries of Western Europe. And the way in which that understanding was received in Germany pointed out the possible common enemy and the need there was for Britain to stand by France if France was to be saved from further spoliation. Lamentable, indeed, was it, that the Tunnel was not then made in the years that followed the Kaiser's ostentatious visit to Tangier and the Algeciras Conference. Had it been, either there would have arisen no war caused by an attack on Belgium or France; or that war might have been nipped in the bud by our prompt use of the Tunnel.

After peace comes-and some sort of peace must soon result from this war of attrition-the electorate should see to it that this vital question is debated in a House of Commons composed of members sufficiently educated in geography to legislate for the British Empire, and no opposition based on ignorance must avail to postpone once more the uniting of England with France by a railway under the narrow and shallow sea.

It is not enough to be told vaguely and pompously that the Governments of France and Britain will see to it, all in good time, that the tunnel is made; and that probably they will make it as a joint enterprise of the two Governments and at the expense of the tax

payers of the two nations. We know -or we ought to know-what that would mean in the way of expense, delay, waste of time and money; and endless political jobbery. It ought not to be forgotten that certain great railway enterprises in East and West Africa undertaken by Whitehall and Downing Street cost the taxpayer far more than they should have done. A million was wasted here, three hundred thousand pounds elsewhere.

The projects afforded many opportunities to bureaucracy to "place" its incompetent nephews and cousins, sons, or brothers-in-law, most of whom had to be shed or politely dispensed with by the contractors or managers, their unnecessary engagement having led to much waste of time and numerous expensive mistakes. Even if the enterprise is to be the joint property-as it must be-of the two Governments, it should be entrusted to a body of business men to construct, whose own interest it shall be that no needless cost shall be incurred.

Once it is made, the gain in time and comfort will be enormous. Thousands of "foreigners" will flock to Britain who have hitherto been deterred by the hateful discomfort and weather obstructions of the Channel passage; The London Chronicle.

millions of British will be additionally impelled to enlarge their minds and their commerce by travel abroad.

Whilst the British climate is what it is and it will be long before man can sensibly control and improve itthere will be an ever-increasing desire to mitigate the miseries of an English or Scottish winter and spring by holidays-brief, but healing-in the warm lands of the Mediterranean; and to all such who may as permissibly spend their saved money in this way, as on doctors and nursing homes, on a London season, or on dispensable frivolities, it would be a great added comfort and health-preserver to enter one's railway compartment in London, in Paris, or at Rome or Nice, and not leave it till the destination, or the first long stage in the destination reached.

was

The Channel Tunnel means the most important link in the through railway communication between England and India, between London and the Cape of Good Hope, between England and China, London and Singapore. There will still be need for all the fleets of large and small ships to convey about the world the raw materials of our industries, and the heavier masses of our manufactured goods.

THE DOMINION'S RAILWAY IDEA, National ownership is recommended in the Majority Report of the Royal Commission to inquire into the Railways and Transportation in Canada. Management by a national and polit

ically independent board of trustees, with a representative of the railway workers themselves on the board, is, however, a fundamental part of the scheme recommended by the Commissioners to consolidate 25,000 miles

of transcontinental and branch lines into a nationally-owned Dominion Railway Company.

The situation in Canada is that the growth of mileage has far outstripped the growth of population. Canada has three transcontinental railway systems. There is sufficient traffic for two good systems-the Canadian Pacific Railway and another-but not enough for three. In round figures the Canadian railway mileage is 40,000 miles, and the population of Canada is assumed to be something like 7,500,000 at the present time. The railway mileage is roughly equal to that of the German Empire-with 67,000,000 inhabitants. Canada has nearly onesixth of the railway mileage of the United States; it has less than onefourteenth of the population. Canada has only 185 inhabitants to support each mile of railway; the United States has 400 inhabitants per mile of line. The status of the Canadian railways is further affected by the existence of a magnificent internal system of natural waterways, which compete with the railways for traffic during the season of navigation.

The Commissioners find that "the net return is so low as to prove that more railways have been built than can be justified on commercial grounds under present conditions." The total amount of public capital involved in direct construction of Government lines, and cash aid, land grants and bond guarantees to private companies is $968,451,000-not counting the value of lands still unsold. Public aid to the principal companies, including subsidies, land grants, and bond guarantees amounts to over $680,000,000. In the case of the Grand Trunk Pacific it amounts to nearly two-thirds of the total investment; in the case of the Canadian Northern to over three-quarters.

The Canadian Pacific Railway, with

a mileage of 12,900 miles, the first in the field, economically built and managed, is a highly profitable system. It is the strongest railway in Canada, and its ramifications are world-wide. The Grand Trunk Pacific

system, with a mileage (excluding Branch Lines Co.) of 1,964 miles, has cost nearly $200,000,000. Its interest charges amount to over $8,800,000 per annum. Its net income last year was $826,653. The Grand Trunk Company is liable to pay over $5,000,000 per annum of the Grand Trunk Pacific interest charges, according to the Report of the Railway Inquiry Commission; and in 1923, when the Canadian Government's obligation to pay interest ceases, the private company would be liable for over $7,000,000 annually.

It has been established also by the Commission that the operation of the Canadian Northern for the year ending June 30th, 1916, resulted in a deficit of over $5,000,000. The Commission finds that the total sum of money that could possibly have gone into the Canadian Northern system is $370,302,451; and of this possible total a sum no less than $298,253,263 is shown to have been provided by public credit and subsidies.

With the Canadian Northern and the Grand Trunk Pacific companies facing such heavy annual deficits, and the public credit so heavily involved, heroic measures are demanded of the Government of Canada -and demanded without delay. The Railway Inquiry Commission is not in favor of direct Government ownership and management. The Commissioners say: "We do not consider that operation by a Minister directly responsible to Parliament would be in the public interest. It would not secure better service or lower rates."

The possibility of the Grand Trunk, Grand Trunk Pacific and Canadian