s over which the railways had little or no control.

Mr. Drayton, shrewdly traversing the network of those prodigally built
railways, felt no need of asking any such question. He carried on into
the slump in business, and on into the war when the Railway War Board,
practising a sort of church union by cutting out competition and
re-routeing traffic for the sake of getting war haulage done as quickly
as possible, left very little for the Drayton court to settle. But
there was a bigger settlement to come later, and Drayton was to have a
hand in it.

As Chairman of the Commission he never made a statement that was good
for a headline, or coined an epigram, or lost his temper, or spluttered
into print. But on a certain occasion, before retiring from the
Commission, Sir Henry put on record a number of things that the people
of this country read with acute and sustained interest. This was the
report of the Smith-Drayton-Acworth Commission for the purpose of
finding out whether the Canadian Northern and the Grand Trunk Pacific
could ever manage to pay their own debts, including interest on
multi-millions borrowed from abroad, or whether, debts and all, they
should be handed over to the people of Canada?

During the war this nation had many commissions. Their very names are
mostly forgotten. Most of them committed themselves to nothing. This
commission to investigate railroad bankruptcy was fated to be very
different. Much of the difference was in Sir Henry Drayton who, had he
been asked the question, might have saved the country the cost of the
Commission.

But of course he was prejudiced, and against the roads. He knew those
roads. The minority report of the chief of the New York Central made
no difference to the grim bulldog judgment of the Chief Railway
Commissioner--that the two secondary systems of Canadian railways were
alike and for much the same causes constitutionally bankrupt, and
should therefore be given the nationalizing cure.

What more disagreeable qualification could a man have for being made
Minister of Finance? The air holes that White had skated around,
Drayton proposed to go right over and to take the people with him.
What the common stock of these roads might be worth was for Sir Thomas
to find out. By the time Sir Henry went to the national ledger that
matter was all adjusted and the thing left was to raise the money.

There's a divinity that shapes our ends even when they do not meet.