SEARCH FOR RAILWAY FACTS

Evening Post, Volume CXIX, Issue 103, 3 May 1935, Page 6

SEARCH FOR RAILWAY FACTS

In political matters the capacity of one country to learn from another is limited, because political colour is the result of emotion as well as of intelligence; and peoples' react differently. But in economic matters, so far as they can be disentangled from politics, one country can still learn from another. Therefore the trip abroad of the chairman of the Railways Board, Mr. H. H. Sterling, may be fruitful, for he will study, inter alia, "what railways are doing in other countries to protect themselves against other forms of transport." The "New Zealand Railways Magazine," which makes this statement, adds that Mr. Sterling will also investigate the other side of the case —to what extent other countries, are co-ordinating their railways with road and sea services. Railway ap; plied policy must be full of lessons that cannot be gathered from merely following political trends. For instance, the world is told a great deal about Fascism in Germany and Italy and about Communism in Russia, yet it is told very Ijttle about the practical achievements of those countries in transport. Surely the latter might teach us something. Since Australia's first Country Party Government took office (in Victoria) it has been stated that-the new Ministers will probably reduce the transport protection that the rail has been given against the road; but, in view of an old-standing rural criticism of road restrictions, such action by a Country Party Government would not be without a political complexion. The relation between the farmer and the rail'v. road problem needs to be studied as an economic condition rather than as a party weapon. Political science, as practised by politicians, fails to. master any of the other sciences. Yet, to be efficient, it should penetrate them all.