THE New Zealand Herald AND DAILY SOUTHERN CROSS. TUESDAY, APRIL 16, 1907. CHEAP CABLING.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XLIV, Issue 13463, 16 April 1907, Page 4

THE New Zealand Herald AND DAILY SOUTHERN CROSS. TUESDAY, APRIL 16, 1907. CHEAP CABLING.

fx is with a sense of the liveliest satisfaction that we note that the London Times is lending its great weight and influence to the advocacy of cheap cabling facilities as a prerequisite to the closer union of the colonies and die Motherland. The reform is one which the Herald has been urging for many years, as of primary importance in the interests of the Empire as a whole, and eclipsing in its effects on the commercial, social, and political life of Great Britain and her great and widely-scattered oversea possessions the benefits of the penny postage, enormous though they have been. Between countries separated by half the circumference of the globe postal communication must , always be slow and must occupy many weeks. However cheap it may be made it can never be otherwise than tedious when compared with 1 the rapidity of telegraphy. For countries so situated the electric cable is the natural medium of communication, and its use should be universal. So long, however, as | high charges are maintained this can never be. It was hoped tliab with the opening of the Pacific cable, owned by the colonies and Great Britain, it might be possible to make the charges so low as to bring I the use of the cable within the means . | of all classes in the community. But ' } though a very considerable reduction in the tariff has taken place this hope has not yet been realised. To the electrician has been given the power of annihilating space and outdoing the fabled achievements ' of Puck, but no statesman, no rc- , former, has yet arisen to devise a 1 j scheme which shall bring the daily i use of the cable within the reach of the humblest in the land, and do for long-distance telegraphy what Rowland Hill did for long-distance postage. The principle of penny postage is a uniform rate for all distances; but with cable messages this rule does not apply, although we believe it is possible to send a message thousands of miles as cheaply, so far as the actual cost of transmission is concerned, as to send it a hundred miles. We have never been able to understand the objections which have been raised to the reduction of cable rates, inasmuch as they are opposed to practical cxrienee in other great enterprises. Cheap rates for the use of all public conveniences have led everywhere to an enormous expansion of business. Penny postage has multiplied the number of letters carried, far beyond the dreams of its early advocates, while the cheap transit - facilities provided by the various "tube " railways at Home and by the Tramway Company in our own city have increased the traffic so vastly that it is a matter of difficulty to cope with it. We may be wrong, for the analogy may not hold good, but we are strongly of the opinion that similar . results would follow the adoption of cheap cable charges. Were a sixpenny rate established all the cables at present in existence would be insufficient . to meet the overwhelming expansion of business that .vould immediately follow the change." As matters are their use is very largely, and in many cases almost solely, confined to press and commercial messages. For social purposes they are of little or no advantage, owing to the prohibitory charges imposed. Theare welcome signs, however, that we may be on the eve of witnessing some sweeping changes which will completely revolutionise' the part which the cable now plays ; in the daily lives of the people, . Imagine the transformation that would be effected in the whole political and social relations of the colonies and Great Britain if it were as cheap to send a cable message to London or Glasgow or Belfast as it is to send a telegram to the Bluff! The sense of our isolation from the world, of our remoteness from our j kith and kin in the Old )Uilt - I 'y, would disappear as if by magic. We would, as it were, be made, to feel that: we were next door neighbours to all the world, and that, though I geographically we were afai off, we | were still able to chat daily over the j cable with those we had left behind j or those who had left us to visit distant scenes. Hundreds of colonists now visit the Old World every year, but they make little or no use of the cable, except in emergencies, and their friends only hear from them at long intervals. Were the j cost, reduced to a minimum they i could exchange weekly messages and j thus maintain constant touch with each other. Cheap cabling would, of a certainty, lead to an enormous development of social communications, and promote, as nothing else j would, those friendly feelings which j distance and time are now apt to j decay. Nor is it possible to overj estimate the advantages which would ! result from being able to read in I our newspapers every morning long | and complete reports of all events jof importance happening in the 1 world. The gains, moreover, would ibe mutual. The colonies would loom j up much larger in the British press. The great public at Home would

loam to know us, to understand us, to realise something of our vast extent of territory, of our growing industrial importance, of our great natural resources. Politically the change would oe fraught with results of the highest benefit to the Empire. It would bring it within the range of a morning's glance. It would make possible a Parliament of the Empire. The subject is one that opens up such vast and magnificent potentialities that we earnestly hope it may be possible to discover a practical solution of it before the conclusion of the Imperial Conference.