RADIO TELEPHONE

Taranaki Daily News, 16 April 1932, Page 24 (Supplement)

RADIO TELEPHONE

TALK OVER 8000 MILES. BRITAIN AND SOUTH AFRICA. Seated in the Cabinet room at No. 10 Downing Street, Mr. Ramsay MacDonald had a talk over 8000 miles of telephone wires and wireless waves with General Hertzog, his opposite number at Cape Town, says the London correspondent of the Manchester Guardian. This was the inauguration of the latest radio-telephone link between the Dominions and the Mother Country, and now anyone here can ring up any South African at £2 a minute. Big business can converse in this way already with big business in Australia, New Zealand, and Canada, and of course with New York, and soon India will be connected up. The voices-across-the-sea performance was very cheery and informal. There were earphones for the listening-in journalists, and when Mr. MacDonald saw them he remarked that the telephones made them look like a lot of judges and he hoped for a favourable verdict. Journalists are hardened folk, but even they got a thrill out of sitting at a table underneath a bust of the Duke of Wellington and hearing General Hertzog’s voice with every little inflection, even exaggerated, coming across all that distance. It was 10.30 in Downing Street and bitter cold; at Cape Town it was 12.30 and high summer. Before the Prime Ministers exchanged sentiments we heard Post Office officials in South Africa and in London enjoying a sort of technical back-chat —“All ready there?” “0.K.,” “Right-o,” and so on. We could even see by telephone (so to speak) the little delay at Government House while General Hertzog was held up on the steps by the photographers, no doubt in bright sunshine. This was indeed, as the Prime Ministers agreed (not in these words), making space and time look silly. When Prime Ministers talk with one another they do so with a certain deliberation. The chiels were takin’ notes at both ends. Mr. MacDonald managed all the same to put a friendly intimacy into his greeting, beginning “My dear Hertzog” and ending “My friend, I shake your hand and bid you good-bye”—a delightful little speech, tactful and cordial in the tone of conversation, not forgetting a compliment to the Springboks, although they did beat Scotland. “Their scrummaging,’’ said the Prime Minister, feelingly, “was simply terrific.” General Hertzog’s rather thin voice contrasted with Mr. MacDonald’s resonant richness. The listeners-in felt there was much to be said for the General’s jocular idea that it would save time and trouble to hold the next Imperial Conference by radio-tele-phone. Mr. MacDonald’s voice was going over the P.O. telephone to the Rugby radio station, thence 5000 miles by radio to Milverton, near Cape Town. Miracles are cheap nowadays.