COMMONWEALTH CABLES.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXI, Issue 18689, 21 April 1924, Page 6

COMMONWEALTH CABLES.

The arrangement just concluded by the Postmaster-General for a night-letter cablegram service between New Zealand and Australia is to be commended as an excellent innovation. Communication between these two adjacent countries has on occasion been surprisingly lacking in reciprocity: the reduction to a penny in outward Australian postage from the Dominion, for example, did not immediately meet with the Commonwealth's willingness to deliver without surcharge letters so despatched. In contrast, the arrangement now notified is a pleasing indication of a desire to co-operate more closely. The details of the arrangement are eminently satisfactory. Hitherto the sending of a 20-word cablegram has cost 78 6d. Although not many cable messages may have been so extensive, that charge provides a basis for comparison between the ordinary cablegram and the minimum message under the night-letter system now announced as coming into force on May 1. That minimum 20-word message is to cost 3s, with 2d for each succeeding word, as against 4£d a word as a flat rate for cable messages now. For this new departure, which extends the lettertelegram system established within the. Dominion and the reciprocal arrangement in operation , between New Zealand and the United Kingdom, Mr. Coates deserves especially the gratitude of the commercial community.