e.
Did I omit to say that he is the first C.P.R. president without
whiskers; the first with a college degree; the first Canadian born, the
first lawyer, the first bachelor and the first man from Toronto who had
occupied that position; the youngest of all the presidents; that he
used to be an expert at college Rugby; that at Upper Canada "Prep." he
was much addicted to pugilism; not to mention the discarded tilt of his
Fedora? If so it is because the man himself sets no value on these
things. His faith is in the collective personality, called the
Canadian Pacific, built up on the Personal Equation.

But Ottawa--what of that? Almost ever since Ottawa was, the C.P.R. has
been said to own it. Governments of either party have never been
inhospitable to the benign octopus--centipede it became--that had its
origin in the Parliament of Canada and wrecked one Tory Government.
The penalty of transcontinental railways is that they require to have
mortgages on governments. Presently the worm turns. But that usually
costs more money than the mortgage. We are now paying off the
mortgages of two great systems. The C.P.R. mortgage was paid long ago.
The President of the C.P.R. is usually regarded as second only to the
Premier in point of national management. But Premiers and governments
come and go; the President stays on. Suppose that in the year 19--
there should be a Cabinet mainly of farmers. Alberta has a farmer
government. Saskatchewan with a "Liberal" government has a Cabinet
mainly of farmers. Manitoba sometimes has to remind herself that
Premier Norris is a kind of farmer. Ontario has a farmer Premier and
more than half a Cabinet of farmers.

This is the age of the farmers' innings. Suppose that a Cabinet of
super-Agriculturists at the Capital some day should not agree with Mr.
Beatty that farmers when they get responsibilities measure up and
settle down to conservatism. Such a Cabinet might not remember that
the C.P.R. had really done so very much for the prairies in comparison
with what it has got from the West. It might decree that a lawyer
President should be called upon to elucidate why he judges that so
efficient a Personal Equation as the C.P.R. should not be
"nationalized", if not government-owned, for the good of the whole
people, and especially of the people whose traffic creates most of the
revenues?

This is merely supposing. In any case Mr. Beatty would be master of
the occasion. The lawyer