Norwich bulletin., 1918-02-06
FACTS AND COMMENT

Under government control the rail- | roads of the United StateS are free from many of the Abilities and re- strictions with which they have been hampered and which have caused them great expense and loss. Heretofore competing roads have been forbidden to arrange for 8 division of business or to pool their receipts, and conse- quently every road has been compelled to furnish every kind of service. For example, the Pennsylvania can of course carry steel and coal to and from the Pittsburgh district very ad- vantageously and the New York Gen. tral can take passengers between New York and Chicago in perfectly satis- factory manner. There is more money. in freight than in passenger traffic. could the two roads have agreed that each would do the bulk of the business for which it was best fitted and locat- ed and from the joint receipts take each a fair share. the PennsylvSaia's tracks would notr be occupied with fast Chicago expresses when the country is crying for coal and steel. But fear ing the elimination of competition the government has forbidden the roads to do this very thing. From hamper l ing regulations of this sort Dirfctor General McAdoo is free and he ought to get results that have been impossi- ble under separate mana cement.
 r Another cause of annoyance and ex- pense for the roads was that they have ever been at the tender mercies
 of forty-eight state legislatures and lhave therefore found it necessary to be constantly on the watch for new l legislation and obliged to keep ready | at hand attorneys to represent their side when regulatory laws should be proposed. A large number of such
 men were thus constantly employed at great expense. Under government control this need has disappeared for
 no state legislature may regulate in- terstate affairs: Hence has been is-
 sued the recent order to dispense with
 all agents employed to watch for and
 affect legislation. The saving under this new order is expected to run into millions annually.
 l These economies are not at all due l to the director generals superior bus mess acumen but are incident to gov
 ernment control of transportation. None have known better than the rail
 road executives themselves that the entire system of American railways has long been laboring under great legal hardicaps. Starting as lines ot but a few miles in length wholly in one state. the railroads had gradual lily become interstate and then trans continental, while legislation to meet I the new situation had Jagged far be- hind. In fact it was only by a liber- tal extension of those clauses of the constitution that had been designed Ito cover stagecoach travel that con-
 gress felt empowered to touch the
 railroad situation at all. Some great public exigency like the present wal was needed to shake the country ou of this impossible condition Whether
 or not government control is to con. , tinue indefinitely, the old hamperins , legal conditions under which America1
 railroading has been struggling ar, gone forever.
 Aside from artillery action an, trench raiding. the only real activit, on the West front has been in Ital, where the initiative seems to hay 5 passed entirely to the side of the Itali ans. These gallant troops assisted b - allied endorsements have retakel e the two most advanced points tha f were seized by the invaders mont = ago and furnished the best vantag 5 slground for the dreaded inroad into tn U plains of Venetia. British, French an | Italian artillery worked in perfec s unison and Austrians taken prisone Q lreport the frightful effect of the eros a fire that assailed them often from sev !, eral directions at once. These prison . CTS have also confirmed the report ; that Germany has been shifting troor e from the Russian front to France an . Belgium during the arrnistice Tn hQ fn af Ir1o
 lsoldiers in the East. replace them wit = troops of poorer quality and order tn s. lfurloughe6 men to report for dut !, elsewhere, whence they could be trans :. ferred to the West without technical - ly being taken from the eastern iron
 At last there is on the west a American sector. Ever since last O. a tober American troops have been in tl le trenches but the war department hs It never admitted that this was mol
 than an advanced stage in their trai1
 ling. Now. however. the statement
 authorized that they have actual
 taken over and are defending sectie " raine southeast of Verdun and St. N
 lhiei and close to the German borde
 There had been little fighting he " since the early part of the war wlat D. the FrSach after initial successes . German soil were driven back to u
 heights before Luneville. This pos
 ton they galfantly held against $ ffrightful assaults in the presence or the kaiser himself. This struggle w IS coincident with the Battle of t 1g Marne and soon thereafter the ty
 armies entrenehed and the lines ha
 been practically stationary ever sine
 ttn inf tn,J, ,e which the Americans had their fir o. introduction to real trench warfare, b it is quiet no longer. As was to
 expected, once the Bocfes located .
 troops, they began smelling the lin VII vigorously. The return fire of 0 as artillery calls forth the admirati a feven of the French veterans, and t
 Infantry in the trenches. though su
 fering the losses inevitable in su UT warfare, are easily holding their ol de bagainst their more experienced foes. If
 " A notable instance of suppression v unfavorabie news is seen in the Ge a. man announcement that the Turki cruiser Sultan Yawuz Selim, forn1e as 1y the German Goeben, has been su IS cesSfully reaoSted after grounding rt the Dardanelles. Two or three wee
 ago in an action outside the stra ng against the British fleet the Turki IT, cruiser Midullu, the former Germ as BresIau, was sunk by British min is while the wounded Goeben managed
 limp inside where she grounded in [
 tnarrows. But Berlin makes mo- ms
 tion of the total loss of the Bresla, 'ar The Bolsheviki activities in Rus in while unsuccessful in obtaining ter s. from the Potsdam military party
 furnishing them great anx1ty as
 the ultimate effect of the Russian II lo- oinIlon on the Working ciasses ln es