"Reason frowns on war's unequal game, Where thousands fall to raise a single name"?
The war-profiteer, too, was "a repulsive phenomenon," who (cp. page 342, Vol. I.) with the "corruption of his influence has done us incalculable harm."
That our own Government of the day adopted and pursued a policy, if not exactly of killing, at least of spoiling, the goose that laid the golden egg--a policy, moreover, which could not fail, here as in Germany, to have the effect of discrediting the fighting man in the eyes of his mate privileged to remain at home--was certainly no fault of the railway companies or of their own employés; in fact one branch at least of the railway service, the staff of which had no particular reason to bless the Government, or indeed the war at all, was the locomotive accountants' department at Crewe; for those who were employed in this particular department, that is to say those of them who were left at home--and the fact should never be overlooked that the percentage of clerks who joined the Forces was not surpassed by that of any other grade of employés on the railways--were involved in the few years of the war in hard work, changes, and readjustments of one kind and another, such as ordinarily would not have been their lot to experience, in the whole course of a lifetime.
It is true that at the commencement of the war efforts were undoubtedly made to curtail office work as far as possible, the Board of Trade assisting in this direction by suspending Statistical Return 12 of the Railway Companies' Accounts and Returns Act. Statistics, too, relating to shunting, extraction of mileage in districts for rating purposes, and certain sub-divisions of mileage, were discontinued.
Then again, the Government having guaranteed the nett receipts of the railways, although charges affecting capital and stock still operated, the Railway Executive Committee decided to put in abeyance the practice of rendering accounts as between one railway company and another, for work or services rendered on revenue account, whether on personal account or at joint stations, junctions, etc.
As against all this, however, obligations commenced, increased, and multiplied in other and different directions. At the very outset of the war, for example, in order to separate the Government control period from the pre-control period, extensive stock-taking was necessary, as well as a complete making-up of accounts as from midnight August 4th, 1914.