The Timaru Herald WEDNESDAY, JUNE 30, 1909. THE PRESS CONFERENCE.

Timaru Herald, Volume XIIC, Issue 13942, 30 June 1909, Page 4

The Timaru Herald WEDNESDAY, JUNE 30, 1909. THE PRESS CONFERENCE.

So far as the information cabled goes, the Press Conference does not appear to have accomplished anything more in the way of business than could have been done by correspondence. The charges for Press messages over the Pacific cable (Vancouver to Australia) are to be reduced, New Zealand has made a reduction, and Australia will probably follow suit, so that the total reduction will be from Is to 9d per word. It is hoped that the Canadian land line and the Atlantic cable rat.-3 will be reduced also, until the total rate is brouglit down to 6d per word. There is no definite promise, however, so far as we can gather, that any reduction is to be made in the cost >f other kinds of cable traffic; and it has been well shovn by those who kn'nv, that in view of the enormous capital cost of cables and the expense of maintaining and ;>£ working them, tl.e cables are by! no means profitable investments now. Mi- Henniker Heaton lias been advocating "penny a word " cables, in order to facilitate social as well as business communication; but experts have shown that it would be impossible to pass through the cables traffic enough to make them pay at a penny per word. The world is not in such a hurry as to require this facility of intercourse around a hemisphere. It is probably clue to a recognition that cheap cable communication is impossible to private installations that has led the Conference to urge the establishment <;f a State-owned service. This might be justified as an element in a scheme of Imperial defence, however costly; but if for the sake of an all-round reduction it would be unfair to make the luxury, or even the urgent need, of the few, a burden upon the many through, taxation to make up de-

ficits. With regard to Press rates, these are tin; concern of the public at large, and it would bo ftiite a reasonable, proposition tha< .Governments should subsidise the Pr-'ss service, were it not that in that case the danger of the service being under suspicion of political influence w'uld tend to injure its usefulness. 0* all hands, State, Press, and Public it is to bo hoped that Mr Marconi will be able to solve the problem of a cheap service for all purposes, as tJere seems to bo somepossibility of lis doing. He says Jie expects to he able shortly to transmit 15,000 words a day across the Atlantic, and the, " Tmes " has calculated that if this rate of transmission can be relied on, a ,ienny-a-word service to Australia anr New Zealand would be quite possible. We are not acquainted with the detils of the latest developments of the Marconi system—whether, for iustane, it is necessary to "receive" and o-tran'smit messages at each station along a chain of stations; or whc'her messages are automatically rc-.'iyed and passed on. If this automatic re-transmission- is possible, it wiuld make the etheric even more lipid than the metallic system. Apart from the business aspect of their proceedings, the delegates to the Conference may be expected on returning to their homes to bring to bear on their editorial and managerial duties some new ideas imbibed during their official discussions, post-prandial essays, and numerous excursions. Judging from the cabled news ,of their doings, they have, most of them, learned to "think Imperially," but whether the kind of Imperialism they have learned to think and to talk is altogether of the wisest and best, time will show. It seems rather lop-sided, too much limited to the 'one subject of Defence. Possibly the person or persons whose duty it is to prepare the news of the doings of the Conference for transmission to Australasia has performed the task under an obsession that Defence was the only subject worth mentioning; but that is not probable. If he lias, done his work fairly we must .accept yesterday's cable giving the • gist of the " Times' " description of the Conference as complete, and this iientions only cable rates and defence. ~ It appears to have been left for Mr W. T. Stead—an earnest advocate for Defence too —to rebuke the Australian delegates for their final absorption in that subject, when the greatest Imperial need, so far as Australia is concerned, is to get that country filled with white people. Believing that it is Australia's meagre population that is one of the greatest clangers to tho Empire, we fully endorse that remark, and add that it applies to New Zealand also. It is not to be wondered at that the delegates adopted the tone of the people they were thrown amongst. The public men of Britain seem to have, outside their local politics, but one thing to talk about— Dreadnoughts; the delegates—th 6 Australians and the New: Zealanders at all events—went Home prepared to' talk about the ,Navy; and between them Dreadnoughts and the Navy generally has been the principal subject of talk all through. It is a thousand pities that Mr Stead's text was not given to the Conference at its opening, instead of .at its close. It is to be hoped that the idea, it conveyed will be one of those which the Australasian delegates will bring back with them and endeavour to urge upon their constituencies as a .great Imperial necessity, the.effectual meeting of which would go a. long way towards rendering Dreadnoughts unnecessary. ---

As ; apropos to the foregoing, we append a brief, comment on the third section of Mr James Chappie's letter in another column. Mr Chappie quotes with approval Auguste Comte, but the quotation is in. flat contradiction to what follows. Coirito says the last phase of militarism —the last duty of the military spirit—is to "conquer advantageous settlements for each nation, or to destroy the resources of foreign competition." The former alternative is precisely what- we fear is the object of the naval activity in Germany. The Socialistic conscience is hot yet educated to forbid the realisation of Comte's theory; and it is no "war of the loom " that is toward. That war has been going on for some.years, and it has not achieved, is not achieving, the desired result for either nation.