The Southland Times. PUBLISHED EVERY MORNING. Luceo Non Uro. FRIDAY, MAY 2, 1930. A MOMENTOUS TALK

Southland Times, Issue 21072, 2 May 1930, Page 6

The Southland Times. PUBLISHED EVERY MORNING. Luceo Non Uro. FRIDAY, MAY 2, 1930. A MOMENTOUS TALK

The Southern Hemisphere has become party to no more momentous conversation than that in which the Prime Ministers of Britain and Australia participated. Wireless telephony across the Atlantic has been in operation long enough to demonstrate its right as a modern necessary, and the service seems to be maintained as a commercial venture with excellent results to the people concerned, but the linking of Australia and Britain, is a more important step, because it has brought the girdling of the globe by the telephone service within close reach. There is something awe-inspir-ing in the fact that Mr Ramsay MacDonald was able to inform Mr Scullin he could hear him as plainly as if he were in the next room. The cable remains, of course, for the despatch of information that must be kept inviolate —the wireless service has not yet protected itself completely from eavesdroppers—but the telephone makes possible discussions and decisions which a few months ago would have taken several days at best. From this development the next step is easily seen. With the extension of the wireless telephone the nations will be brought into closer contact with each other, and transmission of sound through the air will so destroy distance that international barriers will crumble further, but at the same time the tremendous stride .made in television opens up the prospect of a combination of the two systems which will lead to the conveyance of sight and sound to all countries in the world, so that the citizen in Invercargill will be able to see and hear a House of Commons debate, or a great London stage production. It is not. too much to say that people now living will go to a building in Invercargill and watch a New Zealand cricket team playing at Lord’s, while some London audience is able to view a Rugby football test, match played in Wellington. These things will work great change, and demand adjustments in what we may now regard as settled conditions, but certain fundamental things will remain always, and among them is a desire on the part of the individual to do something himself, and to have permanent records of events of his own time. By this we mean that, the wireless telephone and television will not replace individual effort in the arts, and will not eliminate, nor diminish, the demand for newspapers, for books, for gramophone records. The talkies have disturbed the theatre, and temporarily thrown it out of gear, but a reorganization must take place because the shadow show cannot entirely replace the desire of human beings to see human beings and to accomplish things for themselves, any more than the wireless concert can replace the gramophone record. Wireless telephony is 'an addition to the utilities mar. has devised for his use, and no matter how widely its use is extended it will never achieve monopoly to the exclusion of other things which have already proved their usefulness. The New Zealander may wonder how long he will have to wait before he is able to speak over the telephone to his friends in Australia, but the day should not be long distant. Only a little while ago the difficulties in the way of the wireless telephone connection between London and Canberra were serious enough to make the skeptics confident of their attitude, but these have been overcome and Mr Ramsay MacDonald was able to recognize the voice of Mr Scullin as soon as he heard it. An extension to include New Zealand is possible in the near future, and it should be carried out, even if the service requires a subsidy to keep it within reach of the smaller population of this country. Obviously quick contact is of enormous advantage, and in business as well as in inter-Empirc politics the telephone will be used freely. People who read the few details of the momentous conversation between the two Prime Ministers may not have paused to consider the immense possibilities opened up by this development, but in a few words, we hope, we have shown some of the lines along which future operations will proceed, influencing, the lives of people living in widely separated parts of the world.