24 FEBRUARY 1939, Page 6

I spoke last week of the difficulty of deciding how

much importance to attach to the persistent reports of an alarming deterioration of the German railway system's locomotives, rolling-stock and permanent way. As it happened, instruc- tive light was cast on that almost before my paragraph was in print, the German Institute for Business Research pub- lishing an estimate that nearly io,000,000,000 marks (about £800,000,000) will have to be raised by the railways in the next three or four years " because of the increasing demand for rolling-stock." That expression, it is safe to assume, is a euphemism for " shortage of rolling-stock owing to deterioration," though no doubt there is some increase of demand as well. L80o,000,000 tells its own tale.