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[quote]QUOTE: Originally posted by M.W. Hemphill The "what-ifs," entertaining as they might be, are now pointless. They didn't happen, and even if one posits that they had, they lead to what Samuel Eliot Morison called "the Strategic Fallacy," to paraphrase, the assumption that if the Milwaukee Road had done something different, the other railroads would have done the same (as they actually did) and not met it with something different and possibly devastating. Just how, for instance, was the Milwaukee Road to split itself into a Chicago-Seattle main line and a granger network in the Midwest? Just whom was to be saddled with the country-mouse half? We know now how it all turned out, but our information was not available in the past. To even know if the Milwaukee Road's management erred, it would be helpful to cite the specific error made at each decision point in the Milwaukee Road's path, and why the correct alternative, obvious in hindsight, was either opaque or intentionally dismissed at the time of the decision. [/quote] You're correct, and Morison is someone for whom I have immense regard (I read the first six volumes of his 15-volume set "History of U.S. Naval Operations in World War II"; then I graduated college and have no access to the CWU library or another set). His Strategic Fallacy yardstick works for the topic of "What if the MILW. . . " almost as well as it addresses the argument of using the atomic bomb or any other controversial decision in warfare. I speculate out of nostalgia and affection. . .and it's kind of fun to step back from the reality of what happened for a moment.
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