Page:Canadian Alpine Journal I, 1.djvu/54

Rh little or no public interest." The request having been pressed by the Editorial Committee, Sir Sandford said: "On public grounds I can see one reason only for waiving my objection. In the centre of the address there is a diagram intended to illustrate the world-encircling Imperial Cable project, respecting which the public mind still needs educating, and no doubt publication of the address with the forthcoming Journal and a reference to this feature of it in the text, would have an educative tendency, productive of good."

It is difficult at a glance to grasp the full significance of the proposal to establish an unbroken chain of state-owned cable-telegraphs connecting all the self-governing British communities in both hemispheres, but by those who have studied the matter, it is regarded to be of immense Imperial importance. At the three Colonial Conferences assembled in 1887, 1894 and 1902 the subject was under consideration. At the two first mentioned, Sir Sandford, representing Canada, as one of the delegates, took a prominent part in the discussions, and his matured views were placed before the Conference assembling in London on April 15th, 1907. For twenty years he has had the keenest desire to promote the project and has never spared himself or lost an opportunity of advancing it. The Empire Cable scheme is one of his highest ideals. He believes most thoroughly that, when eventually consummated, it will, by bringing all the autonomous units of the Empire around the globe into one friendly neighborhood, electrically and telegraphically, become the indirect means of quickening trade, making more effective the ties of sympathy, more enduring the bonds of sentiment, and thus add strength and stability to the great sisterhood of British nations—the development of the new century we have entered on.