Telegraphy, Aeronautics, and War. By Charles Bright. (Constable and Co.
16s. net.)—Mr. Bright speaks with authority on submarine cables, and his plea for the establishment of a complete Imperial cable service deserves far more attention than it has yet received from the Government—partly because it is a matter that concerns six different Departments. He explains very clearly, too, the disadvantages of " wireless " as compared with the cable ; it is slow, it is frequently interrupted by atmospheric disturbances as well as by the signals from rival stations, and it is not secret. We could wish, however, that he had written a coherent book OD the subject instead of merely collecting a number of articles and speeches in which the same ideas are expounded over and over again, with a superabundance of controversial footnotes. Mr. Bright's Introduction covers the ground ; the rest of the volume will exasperate the most patient reader, although it contains here and there some interesting matter. The author tells us many times that the American Western Union Company controls all the cables to America. If the American Government take over the Western Union's land system, they will presumably take over the cables also. This would afford our Government an opportunity of instituting a British-American official control, which would be preferable to the scheme for a new British Atlantic cable. We should add that Mr. Bright appends to the book a valuable and instructive map of the world's submarine cables, which shows at a giant* the weaker links in our Imperial chain of telegraphic communications.
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