Evening Post. THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 12, 1925. WHERE WILL IT END?

Evening Post, Volume CIX, Issue 36, 12 February 1925, Page 4

Evening Post. THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 12, 1925. WHERE WILL IT END?

It is only a little more than a quarter of a century since Mr. Marconi beat all previous wireless records by establishing communication between England (South Foreland Lighthouse) and France (Wimereux, near Boulogne), a distance of 30 miles, keeping it up six months, and proving that " ordinary commercial messages could be transmitted at the rate of 15 to 20 words a minute." The 3000 miles that separate London and New York are now thought less of than was the 30 miles record of twentyfive years ago. The Atlantic-and even the Pacifie v are narrower than the Channel was then. During the last election campaign any amateur in England could hear Mr. Eamsay Mac Donald addressing the crowds on his lightning tour, or Mr. Asquith fighting his last fight at Paisley. In the course of a -feY years a concert in the Kqyal Albert Hall, or a sermon at the Abbey, or a debate of the House of Commons, or of the Imperial Conference, of the American Congress, or the League of Nations Assembly will be within easy reach of the amateur at this extreme edge of the world. " The unplumbed, salt, estranging sea" will have ceased to estrange,by that time. The obstacles ,of time and space which have hitherto prevented the complete union of our world-wide Empire will have disappeared. So far as physical difficulties are concerned, a Parliament of Empire will present no insuperable problem.

_ From this point, of 'view such a Parliament will be a simpler matter than was a New Zealand Parliament two generations ago, when it took some of the South Island members more than eight weeks to reach !ts first session in Auckland. Ihe New Zealand members will be able to follow the debates'of a genuinely Imperial Parliament by wireless, to catch the Speaker's eye by wireless, and to demolish the arguments of Canada or South Africa by wireless without leaving their arm-chairs... An Imperial Parliament which is very much in the air just now may remain permanently ;in the air, and yet do good business, for if debate can be conducted as easily across 10,000 miles of space as across 10 feet, what need will it have of a local habitation? "The Parliament of Man, the Federation of the world," will also be within easy reach then without the risk of any wrangle as to the site, and Without any heavy outlay, on travelling expenses or palatial buildings. The tower of what would perhaps have been the first Pap. hament House in the world was to .have reached from the land of Shinar " unto Heaven," but before it had reached its destination the attempt was cut short by the .confusion of tongue. The next at-tempt-need involve no such, waste of effort, for a meeting-place will, for the reasons above given be a superfluity. And as to the obstacle presented by the confusion of tongues, it. will surely be a simple matter for some Marconi of the-future to get nearer to the fountam-head than speech and transmit thought from brain to brain without the intervention of language just as readily as music is transmitted to-day. Diplomacy as well as debate will be a much simpler business in the good days that are coming. The occupation of the diplomat who uses speech to conceal his thoughts will have gone. Diplomacy will.be as open as Woodrow Wilson himself would have desired, nor could it be anything else if it tried.

But it is time that we dropped from these flights of fancy to the sober realities of the wireless world of to-day, realities which may, intleed, be said to be carrying sobriety to its furthest limit if the statement cabled yesterday may be accepted. A witness giving evidence before an English licensing tribunal, presumably with the object of showing that the profits of the Trade are not what they were, is ( said "to have declared that '• workers now prefer wireless to whisky." But we should like to see the full context, to. weigh" the evidence of the police and the official statistics/ and to hear the point thoroughly -argued before giving the statement full credence; And even if the statement be accepted as it stands, it would be rash to infer that the threat to the supremacy of whisky has increased the relative popularity of ginger-j beer or cold water. , Another in- j terestirig point suggested by the same message is that, if whisky | i» thus being deposed by wireless, it may find in wireless^ the means of its own \re-establishmen.t. It may reverse the process with which the facts from yEschylus to Moore have familiarised us, and which has been put as neatly by Byron as by any other: -

So.the sh-'ack eagle, stietch'd upon the plain, ' . . No more through rolling clouds toisoar again, View'djiig own feather.on the fatal Vlavl Alld, WHig.d. the shaft that quiver'd in "is heart. '

Whisky may convert this familiar image into that rare figure, ," a simile of dissimilitude," if from the snyßtorieuß power which threatens, itu pvido of place it can get

wings x to enable it to soar highey still.

But so far drink appears to be leaving to food a monopoly of the war in the air. The fruit salesmen are said to have given a good lead by " broadcasting a ditty urging people to eat more fruit "— the composer more probably urged them more fruit to eat-" which is less injurious than meat." Whereupon the aggrieved butchers took up the challenge, turned on a poet to champion the roast beef of Old England, but not, it is to be feared, the mutton of New Zealand, and broadcasted the inspiring slogan, "Eat More Meat." The latest to. join. the fray are the fishmongers of Billingsgate, who, not finding in the praise of fruit and meat, just" what they could wish, s are broadcasting the wireless cliorus, "Eafc More Fish." There are scores of other eatables still awaiting their sacred poet and their wireless chorus, and when these- eating propagandas have • failed., the nation to repletion, it will, of course, be told to find a cure for its ills i n the broadcasted merits of / patent medicines and pills. Where is the celestial orgy to end? The man who values his digestion will have to leave wireless alone. ■