Page:Fred Arthur McKenzie - British Railways and the War (1917).djvu/21

 any railway running between the points to which the tickets were issued. This concession was shortly afterwards withdrawn.

The great strain of the dispatch of the first Expeditionary Force passed, but it soon became clear that the railways would be faced by a double problem. They would all the time have a vast amount of military traffic to handle—the transference of troops, the carriage of munitions, the assembling of different sections of war material. Simultaneously with this great increase of work, they had a very serious reduction of staff. A number of railwaymen had been called up at once as Army Reservists and Territorials, while many others volunteered to join the Colours. It was estimated a few months after the outbreak of war that 66,000 men, out of a total of 643,135, had joined the Army. This figure rapidly grew, until at the end of 1916 nearly 150,000 men had been released by the railways for war duty—close on 50 per cent. of the men of military age. This shortage of labour quickly grew into one of the most serious issues. The companies had no desire to keep back recruits from the Army, but they realised that it was essential for the welfare of the nation that the railways should be maintained in an efficient manner and be prepared to meet any military demands which might be placed on them. The King, in a message to the skilled workers in the shipbuilding and armament firms, emphasised this latter point in words that applied equally to