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New Zealand Herald, Volume XXV, Issue 8963, 30 January 1888, Page 5

The Postal Conference at Sydney has finished its sittings, and general regret will be experienced in this colony that the feeling of the Conference was adverse to the construction of the transPacific cable. Of course this does not necessarily determine the fate of that enterprise, though it would have been more satisfactory if it had commended itself to the favour of the assembled delegates. It was hardly to be expected that the representatives of the sister colonies would have taken such an interest in this as is generally felt in New Zealand ; but even to Australia the advantages of having an alternative route for telegraphic communication, in the event of certain contingencies, must be great. If peace were assured over all the earth the laying of duplicate cables by the Eastern route would answer every requirement ; but 110 one can hesitate for a moment in believing that if a general European war occurred our telegraphic communication with England by the existing routes, would run every risk of being incontinently ruptured. This should be as apparent to Australians as to ourselves, and we venture to say that the Australian delegates have not correctly interpreted the wishes of the people of their several colonies. In this respect New Zealand has 110 separate interest from those of the sister colonics ; and, in the event of a European war, wo should all equally suffer from the only line of telegraphic communication with the centre of the Empire being liable to fall into the hands of those hostile to British interests. In this view we cannot undeistand how the people of Australia could be indifferent to the importance of telegraphic communication from England by the western route ; and we confidently anticipate that any disinclination on the part of the delegates from the sister colonies, or any indifference 021 the part of the people themselves, can be only of a temporary character. But even should it prove otherwise, we trust that this colony will not lightly forego the advantages, or overlook the claims of such an alternative line of communication. Our dependence on the Eastern Telegraph Company for our sole communication with Europe has been already felt to be sufficiently irksome, and anything to confine the monopoly existing should be sternly resisted. Of course the taking on herself by New Zealand of the whole of the responsibility proposed for the Australasian colonies by the promoters of the trans-Pacific cable is not to be thought of: but keeping in view the earnestness with which the Canadian Government desires to form closer relations with the colonies, and the probability of influences working strongly in the United States in the same direction, it is to be hoped that our Government will see a way to bringing about an understanding by which such an essential to the safety, as well as the commerce of the, colonies as a trans-Pacific cable, may be obtained.