CABLE SECRECY

Greymouth Evening Star, 24 January 1931, Page 12

CABLE SECRECY

HOW IT MAY BE DESTROYED. Future prospects in wireless and cable communications were described at a luncheon in London of the Royal Empire Society by Sir Basil Blackett,, chairman of Imperial and International Communications, Ltd. Sir Basil said:— We are accustomed to think of the birth of the United States of America, as a very modern event, yet a President elected in the first week of November does not take up his duties at Washington till the following March, the long interval being based on a calculation of the time required to travel from the north of the State of Maine to Washington by means of transportation available at the end of the 18th. century. I have often thought that a delightful essay could be written by someone with experiences of post-war conferences describing the Council of Nicaea and comparing the coming to birth of the Nicene Creed with the drafting of —shall we say—the Reparation Chapter of the Treaty of Versailles. An instructive parallel might be drawn between the struggle over the iota which in the Greek represents the vital difference of meaning between the phrases which are rendered in English respectively as “of like substance” and “of the same substance,” and the phrase in the Reparation clauses which gave Germany “a just opportunity of being heard” which a cynic said meant “an opportunity of just being heard.” Such a jeu d’esprit would throw a flood of light on the unchanging characteristics of human nature and of general world conferences, but when the writer came to a comparison of world communications in the two eras he would find himself lost.

AN EXPECTANT WORLD. The differences are startling and profound, yet all of them —railways, steam and motor ships, aeroplanes, electrical telegraphy and telephony — are inventions of the period since Waterloo.

Revoluntionary changes in international telegraphy and telephony since the war are profoundly affecting the position of this country and of the British Empire.

It is by no means certain that in another war our cable s> stems would be immune nor is it beyond the bounds of possibility that some new invention much less startling than many of those which have been made in the last decade will enable a ship at a distance to listen-in to messages passing along a submarine cable and so destroy their superior secrecy.

Facsimile messages are now merely waiting for the growth of a sufficient commercial demand to take their place as an ordinary factor in business dealings.

Big business houses may, for all I know, become ere long accustomed to the use of telegraph-type machines in their offices on which they communicate direct with their associated houses in other capitals, as they do to-day in using telephones. And there are friends of the Marchese Marconi who have told him that they will not be satisfied until he has discovered how to pick up from the ether the Sermon on the Mount.

As I see it, before very long, either by means of cable or by wireless almost every country in the world will be desiring, and in many cases able, to communicate with every other country in the world. Within the British Empire not only do the cables provide'a sure-all-Empire route, but by means of relay stations wireless communications will cease to be at the mercy of atmospherics. The Imperial Communications Conference of 1928 rightly laid stress on the necessity for Imperial co-operation, with unity of control and unity of direction within the Empire. Imperial and International Communications, Limited, is an Imperial public utility company, owing its creation to the united decisions of all Governments of the Empire. In no other field are the opportunities for Imperial economic partnership more promising than in that of telegraphy and telephony. Both during the recent Colonial Office Conference and during the Imperial Conference, I have tried to make it clear that the proudest wish ’of the company is to work in close cooperation with all the Governments of the Empire. We have to meet a new situation in a new world. We have ... to deal with strong competition from American organisations in many parts of the world, one of which has been described as “an attempt to build up an American communications Empire.” I do not think that either the Americans or we can get very far if we think along the lines of a world Empire of communications. There is room for both of us, as well as for other national systems of communications if we are working in co-operation with our eyes not on domination but on service to mankind. But if the British Empire is to play its part in world communications, it must play its part as a single economic family, every member of which is doing its best to serve the whole in the matter of communications. And in securing the best possible communications for the Empire each partner will be securing best his own interests.