The Otago Daily Times. SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 30,

Otago Daily Times, Issue 10531, 30 November 1895, Page 4

The Otago Daily Times. SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 30,

of Atlantic cables, was for two millions. The probability is that the sum required for a. route satisfactory to all the colonies will lie somewhere between the two. Here ■we may mention that it was due to the action of Mr Lee Smith at the Ottawa Conference that tenders were called for. 1 It is reasonable to suppose that New Zealand will be allowed to furnish one of the two commissioners for Australasia. One would serve the interests of the Australian coatinent perfectly well. Whoever is selected should be entrusted ■with power to bring the matter to a final issue, and therefore it is necessary that a Cabinet .Minister should be chosen. Mr Ward, though we should be. sorry to trust to his own figures or his own schemes, is marked out for the task. He is by no means the most prominent figure among those who have been working for this cable. The question was really initiated, as we have said, at the meeting of the International Conference in London in 1887, and much sounder heads than Mr Ward's have been at work upon it ever since. But Mr Wabd has given the matter a great deal of attention, has discussed it at the conferences at Wellington, Sydney, and Robart, and is familiar with the minds of Canadian statesmen on the question. The matter ought to be perfectly safe in his hands.

There is every reason to believe that the vexed question of a Pacific cable is at length to be taken np with some promise of fulfilment. A.recent cablegram announced that Mr Chamberlain had expressed to a deputation of colonial delegates a very defuiite opinion in favour of a scheme of cable communication across the Pacific. His Government, he said, had decided to promote the scheme; personally, he regarded the deputation as a Council of the Empire, and he had sufficient faith in the scheme to believe that there it as in it a fair prospect of financial success. And as the outcome of the deputation's work Air Chamberlaik proposes a commission of six members—Great Britain, Canada, and Australasia each sending two—to consider the question in all its bearings. At first sight, and after recalling the numerous conferences that have sat upon this question in various quarters of the world, the promotion of another commission doeß not seem a very great advance. It is so, however. There is evary reason to believe that the discussions of the commission will ripen the scheme sufficiently to enable it to be taken in hand at once. Air Chamberlain at the head of the Colonial Office is Mr Chambebi/AiN—an able and extremely vigorous statesman, of practical mind and very definite views, and—what is not so common among statesmen of his order—with the Imperial idea uppermost in his mind. The fact that he is in a position to say that the Imperial Government have decided to promote the scheme of Pacific cable communication really places the ■whole question upon a footing it never held before. Hitherto the Imperial Government, while unable to withhold general approval of the undertaking, has nevertheless rigidly held aloof from the promotion of it, and has positively refused anything in the shape of direct contribution. The main reason no doubt was reluctance to enter into a trading concern already given over to private commercial enterprise. This view was put plainly enough at an international conference held in London in 1887, when the English Postmastergeneral declared that "it would-be a matter of extreme difficulty, and I think without precedent,, for the, English Government itself to become interested in such a scheme in such a way as to constitute itself a competitor with an existing commercial enterprise carried on by citizens of the British Empire." But it is obvious that enunciation of such an opinion, creditable enough, as it is in itself, implied failure to recognise the extent to which Imperial interests were concerned. That recognition has come with the cmicker