WELLINGTON NOTES.

Evening Star, Issue 13002, 22 December 1906, Page 7

WELLINGTON NOTES.

[SPECIAr, TO THE StaU-] WELLINGTON, December 21. The logical consequence of the squaring off of the Assets Realisation Board is tho interim 5 per cent, dividend, which has permeated shareholders with the conviction that at last they are emerging from tho tunnel into tho light. It is pleasant, the shareholders put it, to look back to the year 1394. The public take tho adjustment of the representation very philosophically, Mr A. R. Atkinson is mentioned as an already buzzing candidate for the new Wellington seat, and that is all. There is a shudder in political circles when the Taumaranui seat is mentioned. It is recognised that the ancient King Country is advancing into line, but ■what a fearful dispersion of laborious travel. I find tho Marconi system is attracting attention here considerably. Returned visitors talk excitedly about the installation at the Exhibition, and of the extraordinary interest it excites in that city, as is testified by the crowds that jostle round the operator; but as newspaper enterprise is dumb on the subject the public here remain ignorant. Tho Hon. Mr Millar’s last speech on the subject of the installation of the wireless system here is exciting some attention; ho is reported to have said that it would bo useless, because (I) no ships ore. equipped, and (2) if they were they would be too few, and their occasions of danger too few, to warrant the expense. The fact, of course, is, as I have reason to know, that the installation on board the ships would follow the installation of land stations. It would do bo not only in the natural sequence of things, but from the desire of the shipowners to co-operate, which is very real; and, moreover, they know that a daily bulletin on their ships would be popular with the travelling public. Further, there is a wide-spread feeling that a progressive country like this should have an up-to-date thing like the wireless telegraphy. For the most part the people I talk with on the subject will not consider the question from tho narrow point of view of direct profit; they take the high ground of Imperial policy—in war cables may bo cut, but a wireless service, like the brook ‘‘ goes on for ever,” and its babble is ever of the great event which the cutters of cables wish to keep dark for thoir own purposes and our detriment- Britain is, they go on to say, the only State which possesses tho territory necessary for fixing that wireless girdle round the earth which Ariel, in a famous passage, said he was ready to get up in forty minutes. Britain with a wireless girdle would consequently bo supreme in war. They argue, further, that we who sent contingents to Africa, and are always expressing readiness to send more anywhere for the Empire, ought to draw together to make the Empire supremo in war. Thus, they contend, war may be averted, for nations will not attack a rival who has the command of the intelligence department of the world. Thev clinch the argument by reference to the navy. All our statesmen advocate an increased subscription to the navy, but what better can we do for tho fleet than to give the ships land stations everywhere for their ships equipped with the wireless apparatus. Buttressed in this quadruple fashion, thev regard £20,000 a year as a bagatelle. "With most of us here the idea of dispensing with the greatest invention of the day because it won’t pay dividends is unthinkable. Yon hear the question everywhere: “"When Seddon died did all the faculty of thinking imperially die with him?”