The Imperial Wireless and Cable Conference, of which Sir John
Gilmour and Mr. A. M. Samuel were the principal members, must be both praised and thanked for their wonderfully satisfactory Report on Imperial communica- tions. There ought no longer to be any difficulty about composing the conflicting interests of cables and wireless. At first sight the intricacy of the problem seemed quite baffling, for the problem was nothing less than to reconcile the apparently irreconcilable. However, agreement has been reached and we pass from admiration to admiration in -examining the details. It was plain that if nothing was done for the cable companies they would become bankrupt owing to the much lower working costs of the new wireless beam service. Yet the survival of the cables was necessary for the safety of the Empire. Both wireless and cable services exhibited an extraordinary jumble of ownership, some being purely State-owned, others purely privately owned, and yet others being partly nationalized and partly in private hands.
Previous page
