ALL RED ROUTE.

Dominion, Volume 1, Issue 67, 12 December 1907, Page 7

ALL RED ROUTE.

A. P. AND 0. VIEW OF AUSTRALASIAN MAIL MATTERS. YEARLY LOSS OF £300,000. COAL-CARRIAGE IN THE PACIFIC. JAPANESE COMPETITION. BT TELEGRAPH —PRESS ASSOCIATION—COrTMGHT. (Rec. Deo.'ll, 10.37 p.m.) London, December 11. Sir Thomas Sutherland, Chairman of tho P. and O. Company, presiding at a meeting of tho Company, said that it would require gigantic resources to start an All R-ed route express service to Now Zealand and Australia. How express steamers could bo built to carry coal over tho 6500 miles between Vancouver nnd Wellinigton was an engineering problem that was at present unsolvable. And if the steamers coaled- at Honolulu (which is United States territory), what would become of tho All Rod route? Referring to the passenger trade, Sir Thomas Sutherland regretted that tho Commonwealth had adopted a. policy excluding companies like tho P. and O. from participating in tho coasting traffic of Australia, [f tho threatened measure passed, it would deprivo tho P. and O. Company of nearly £300,000 a year. The new Australian tariff .also imposed very high charges on theirstores. ! Sir Thomas Sutherland, admitted that Japan had captured tho carrying trado between Japan and Bombay. Sir Thomas Sutherland is one of the shipping magnates who wero accused o£ bcinsr hostile to the ill-fated Laing Syndicate. He denied having taken any hostile steps against the syndicate, but, with others, considered it was proposing to undertake an unprofitable venture. _ The weak point which ho indicates in tho Pacific scotion of - the All Bed Eouto was touched on in The Dominion of December 5, which quoted the dictum of tho "Daily Telegraph" that the coal-carrying problem at"present "stems to offer an insuperable difficulty to very high speeds in tho Pacific, and, indeed, almost everywhere else than in the comparatively short Atlantic voyage. The "threatened measure" is evidently tho Australian Shipping Navigation Bill, which is based on the report of the Navigation Commission. The Commission recommended, inter alia, that the coastal. trado of the Commonwealth should be reserved for ships on the .Australian Register or conforming to Australian conditions, and licensed to trade on the coast, British mail steamers carrying • passengers to be exompt from the reservation pending the construction of a railway between Western ami South Australia.