THE GERMAN STATE RAILWAY SYSTEM.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXII, Issue 10006, 31 March 1910, Page 6

THE GERMAN STATE RAILWAY SYSTEM.

The State railway systems of Ger- ] many are managed upon two general, principles. Pi'st, they are to serve 1 the general interests of. domestic and external trade; and, second, they are to show'a satisfactory, profit. The Prussian railway administration in 1908 lowered iis, regular freight tariffs for 64 per cent, of the traffic,, m ord3r to serve the exigencies 'of. i trade, especially epxort trade, during | a period of commercial depression. ' Tne Government is in a position in i/Germany to influence the' whole machinery, of trade ; and transportation as no btfier Government in the world can do, and this fact must be • taken into account when other people ,' think of competing on equal terms j with the Germans in the Far' East or in South America. The adminis- ' tration of the railways, telegraphs, {telephones, mines, and the public domains by the State is possible only through trained civil servants. The efficiency of State-managed mines and' lactones in "coifipetition' Iwith privately-owned enterprise in Germany comes from the character of the bureaucacy. This permanent ciyil service is one of the greatest glories, of.Germany, and one of the most powerful of reasons upholding the . monarchialprinciple in a semi-auto-, cratic form in Germany. The Prus , sian. bureucracy, the model of the other German States is thecreation of the Bohenzollerii family during three csnturies. It had been developed ■and"improved under all " the v efficient Sovereigns of the HoheniolJerh line, ! such as the Great Elector•'and Fred-

\ erick the Great, -anlitfhas been a principle of the private policy of the Hohenzollern'family to *ulfe through a body of ci place in the State is that of the army, or perhaps it would be more just to say next to the army., The' non-partisan admin-, istrat've body;; vVithits'own- disciplinary courts 'for, cutting out of the., public, aetvice attv.tnethber who uses hisoffi ial position a private intarest/' eiffie> his own or that of another,' has'kept'the" civil service up to a cone of honour "triit can b3 compared in -, the; IJiiiteo; States only to the codes regulating the and the ; "Monarchial tiocialism in Germany,'' by Elnur Roberts, in January N'Scribner." 1 .-