such efficiency, and in the main such
national sanity. Shaughnessy always liked to have a voice in national
affairs. That was partly tradition. It also kept the public from
remembering that the railway after all was a creature of government and
of politics. It sometimes deflected public attention from the "melon"
patch which was the _Toronto World's_ sobriquet for the C.P.R. "pork
barrel," and from the ever potential lobby maintained by the company at
Ottawa. Of course lobbies are always repudiated. No self-respecting
railway ever knows it by that name. There is no department of lobbyage
in the head offices. The art is never taught. But it is childish to
dodge the public necessity of a great corporation being represented at
the centre of national legislation. In fact, C.P. has loomed so large in
public affairs that a member of Parliament for the Company would
sometimes have been scarcely ridiculous. Whenever Lord Shaughnessy went
to Ottawa, it was public news. He never went for his health, seldom
without some issue too big for a subordinate to handle. Had the Minister
of Railways gone to Montreal to see Mr. President, it would have seemed
quite as natural.

The war gave Lord Shaughnessy for a time almost equal prominence with Sir
Sam Hughes. His quite sensible speech criticizing the haphazard and
costly methods of recruiting made Hughes retort that to raise the First
Contingent was as great a task as building the C.P.R. Lord Shaughnessy
earned that absurd retort because of his announcement to the Government
that he meant to make the speech; as though the nation would be waiting
to hear it. There was room for one super-governmentarian at Ottawa;
never for two. It was Hughes _vs._ Shaughnessy.

Lord Shaughnessy's retirement from the presidency was not sudden. He had
reached his zenith. His eyesight was bad. But he had not lost his grip.
The war threw such an unusual load on the system and so changed its
complexion that it became necessary to have a younger man. There is
reason to believe that the war rudely upset much of the Imperial dignity
of the great system. The C.P. was no longer a law unto itself. It was
part of the national pool. The President was no longer a sublime
autocrat; he was a public agent. The life blood of a globe-girdling
system was drained by the war, even while it retained its supremacy as
the greatest railway and more than held up its end compared with the
railway muddle in