III.—Sir Eric Geddes.

Which is boyhood's commonest ambition, to run away to sea or to be something on a railway line? And how few, when they are grown up, find that they have realised either of these desires! The present Minister of Transport has freely confessed to his intimates that more than once, when he was floating paper-boats in his bath or climbing a tree in the garden to look out for icebergs from the crow's-nest, he felt in his child's heart that water was the ultimate quest, the adventure, the gleam. And yet for many a long year railways entranced and enslaved him. Often he would sit for hours, forgetful of the griddle cakes rapidly being burnt to a cinder, and gaze at the puffs of steam coming from the spout of the kettle or the quick vibrations of its lid, planning in his mind some greater and better engine that should be known perhaps as The Snorting Eric, and be enshrined in glass on Darlington platform.

Once, when he had bought a small model stationary engine and the methylated spirit lamp had by some accident set fire to the carpet, he was found after the conflagration had subsided standing serenely amongst the wreckage. When challenged as to its cause, "I cannot tell a lie," he replied calmly; "I did it with my little gadget." A few months later he and the present Ambassador of Great Britain at Washington had constructed a double line of miniature tracks, which connected all the rooms on the ground floor of the house and considerably interfered with the parlourmaid's duties. It was known to the family as the Great Auckland Railway. Another favourite hobby of the young engineer was to lie on his back and watch the spider spin her web, comparing the results with a railway map of Great Britain. It was seldom that he went to bed without having learnt at least a page of Bradshaw by heart.

Going from strength to strength this apparently dreamy lad had climbed the giddy rungs of fame until, at the outbreak of war, he stood with the ball at his feet and the title of Deputy General Manager of the N.E.R. It was he who had invented the system whereby the handle of the heating apparatus in railway carriages could be turned either to off or on without any consequent infiltration of steam, thereby saving passengers from the peril of death by suffocation. It was he who, thumping the table with an iron fist, had insisted vehemently that caged parrots travelling in the rack should, if capable of speech, be compelled to pay the full fare. It was he who effected one of the greatest economies that the line had ever known by using rock-cakes which had served their term of years in the refreshment-room as a substitute for the keys which hold the metals of the permanent way in their chairs.

In the summer of 1914 he was about to adopt a patent device for connecting the official notices in compartments with gramophones concealed under the seats in such a way that when humourists had by dint of much labour made the customary emendations, such as "It is dangerous to leap out of the windows," "To stop the rain pull down the chain" and "To eat five persons only," a loud and merry peal of laughter should suddenly hail the completed masterpiece.

Armageddon supervened, and the rest of Sir Eric Geddes' career is history. When a new and sure hand was needed at the Admiralty, Mr. Lloyd George was not long in making the only suitable choice. Sir Eric Geddes' bluff hearty manner, positively smacking, despite his inland training, of all that a viking ought to smack of, had long marked him out as the ideal ruler of the King's Navy, and his name was soon known and feared wherever the seagull dips its wing. Underneath the breezy exterior lay an iron will, like a precipitate in a tonic for neurasthenia, and scarcely had he boarded the famous building in Whitehall and mounted his quarter-deck (Naval terms are always used at the Admiralty, the windows being called "port-holes" and the staircases the "companion") than victory began to crown the arms of the Senior Service.

But peace no less than war finds an outlet for the energies of the old sea-dog, and the veriest hint of a railway strike finds him ready with flotillas of motor lorries in commission and himself in his flag char-À-banc, aptly named the Queen of Eryx, at their head. Lever, marlin-spike or steering wheel, it is all one to the brain which can co-ordinate squadrons as easily as rolling-stock, to the man who is now sometimes known as the Stormy Petrol of the Cabinet. Yet even so the sailor is strongest in him still. It is not generally known that Sir Eric has already cocked his weather eye at our inland waterways as an auxiliary line of defence in case of need. Experience has taught him that it is even now quicker to travel, let us say, from Boston (Lincs.) to Wolverhampton, by river and canal than by rail, and the future may yet see Thames, Trent and Severn churned to foam by motor barges of incredible rapidity, distributing the nation's food supplies.

This is one of the things that the Ministry of Transport has, so to say, up its sleeve, and is alone a sufficient answer to those who suggest that this Ministry has outlived its hour. There is a grim Norse spirit amongst its officials, inspired perhaps by their chieftain's name, and already the plans for a first-class Pullman galley are under way. As Longfellow sings:—

K.

"Mr. P. G. H. Fender, the Surrey cricket captain who has gone out with the M.C.C. team to Australia, is preparing a book on the tour, for which he has chosen the title of 'Defending the Ashes.'"—Weekly Paper.

Quite the proper function for a Fender.

ELFIN TENNIS.