Hawke's Bay Herald. THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 14, 1878.

Hawke's Bay Herald, Volume XXI, Issue 5008, 14 February 1878, Page 2

Hawke's Bay Herald. THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 14, 1878.

At the time we write, we have no fresh intelligence before us from Europe. One of the knottiest points that the Conference will have to solve will be the ultimate destiny of the Turkish fleet. The heavy indemnity and the alliance with Turkey both seem to indicate that Russia intends, in accordance with Prince Wassilchikoff's suggestion, which has been the subject of a good deal of comment in the English newspapers of late, to make an effort to get it, and thus to constitute herself, at once, a first rate naval power in the Mediterranean. This, England will not allow, at any rate, if she can find allies to back her up in resisting it. The Times offers as an alternative suggestion to Prince Wassilchikoff's, that the. fleet should be treated as part of a bankrupt's estate, and that the ships should be sold by public auction to the various European nationalities, to pay off a portion of the claims of the Turkish bond-holders. Prince Gortchakoff's intimation to the Powers, that as Great Britain had sent her ironclads to Constantinople to protect the interests of the Christians there, Russia would occupy the fortresses' on the shore with" the same object, sounds like contemptuous irony. If Russia is allowed to carry out her intention, and if the fortresses are anything like what they are generally believed to be, the English squadron will be at her mercy.

The Times of a recent date has a striking article on the Telephone. "A great change," it commences, " has come over the conditions of humanity. Suddenly and quietly the whole human race is brought within speaking and hearing distance." The future tense would, no doubt, be more strictly appropriate in this last assertion than the present. Still it is to be remarked, that even in the present the invention has emerged from the exhibition stage, and is being applied to the every-day work of life. Prince Bismarck has set it to work on German State busi- « 6 «n 8 Au nd "? Iread y»" says The Tivies, 500 houses m New York converse with one another; 3000 telephones are in use in the United States : they are used by companies and other large concerns wherever the works are some way from the office, in waterworks, pits, aad mines. Friends on the opposite sides of a broad Btreet converse as if in one room. The known tone and inflections of the speaker, a whisper, a cough, a sigh, a breath can be heard. The little incidents of human utterance which it takes a wakeful ear to detect, aided by the eye and by familiar acquaintance, are found to pass along miles of wire, many of them under the earth or sea. Silent as the medium may be, and dead as it seems, the sound comes out true. A hundred miles of galvanic agency becomes only one imperceptible link between two human mechanisms." These are actually accomplished facts at the present moment. When we come to the future, the prospect opened up IB truly amazing. '• A time is coming," goes on our great contemporary, "when everybody, we presume, will carry his telephone about with hitri. Wherever he goes he will be able to step into a telegraph office, applying his own wire to the public wire, and hold a private conversation with a wife, or a son, or a customer, or a political friend, at the end, witho/ut the intervention of a public ser-

vant." Referring to a variety of inventions that, in ordinary circumstances, would be considered important, it says, "They do not revolutionize the world. What the telephone promises is hardly short of this. There is no reason why a man should not hold conversation with a son at the Antipodes, distinguish his voice, hear his breathing, and, if the instrument be applied as a stethoscope, hear his heart's throb. Next to seemg — nay, rather than seemg — what would parents give to hear the very voice, the familiar laugh, the favorite song, of the child long separated by a solid mass 8000 miles in diameter? Will the telephone be able to convey the singing of our birds to the less vocal tropical regions, the breaking of the surge, or any other of nature's sweet or wild utterances 1 Will it bring to our metropolis the dreadful sounds of the bombardment or the battle-field?"