Professor William Thomson, the accomplished electrician, who took so distinguished
a part in the arrangements connected with the laying of the Atlantic cable, was entertained at a public dinner in Glasgow on Thursday. In his speech the professor described the past and spoke with a modest confidence of the highly probable success of future opera- tions.
"Sooner or later, we all believe, another Atlantic cable will be laid ; but will it last any longer, will it do any more work then the one which has raised and east down so many hopes ? Will another experiment be another gigantic failure, and will material locomotion be again fallen back upon as the only means of communication between the Old and New Worlds ? That the next trial will not be a failure no man living can say is more than pro- bable, although on no one point can it be said that there is any insurmount- able difficulty, and least of on that which has proved the cause of ruin in the present case. Increased caution in the manufacture and preservation, even without improvements in the material, of the insulating cover, with a more searching system of detection for faults, might, I believe, make very sure against any recurrence of such a failure. The great risk which the enter- terprise undeniably involves depends not on any one source of danger, but on the multiplied chances of accident inseparable from the exposure of so great a length of cable to so great a variety of contingencies."
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