BRITISH RAILWAYS AND THE WAR
management that low fares mean heavy traffic. Here is a matter which will demand the most careful consideration of both railway managements and the men's leaders.
The third problem is that of the future of women's labour on the railways. The companies have promised that men who have left them to serve with the Colours will be reinstated on their return in positions equal to those they left. That promise must be kept, and kept to the full. But, unfortunately, many of the men will never return. Women have been found such efficient railway servants that they are certain to be retained. Many branches of railway employment before the war exclusively held by men will, a few years hence, be wholly or almost wholly in women's hands. How can the change which has already taken place be made permanent without strife?
The changed conditions after the war may, of course, provide in themselves a solution for all these possible problems. In the great rush of work to be done when the world is to be repaired, when ruined countrysides are to be rebuilt, great cities re-equipped, and the waste of war made good, there will be for a time at least a demand for labour greater even than the supply afforded by a gradually demobilised army. It has been the experience of other generations that a successful nation emerging triumphantly from a hard-fought war has in itself such springs of hope, enthusiasm, and inspiration that
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