Page:The empire and the century.djvu/283

 direct from Great Britain to Canada except one of them, which lands at the Portuguese islands or the Azores on the way. Five are owned by two British companies, and the remaining seven by two American companies.

The further point, then, which merits attention is that the telegraphic communications between Great Britain and Canada are singularly ample and direct. The question naturally arises, Why are American cables allowed to unite Canada and Great Britain in competition with British cables? The answer is threefold: (a) American cables landing on British shores fall, ipso facto, under British control in case of war, and therefore can only add to our strategic resources. (b) Our five British cables, though landing in Canada instead of the United States, only do so because the speed of a cable varies inversely as the square of its length. Stated mathematically, if a cable of 500 miles gives a speed of 120 letters a minute, the same cable prolonged to 1,000 miles would only give a speed of 80 letters a minute. Hence the cables are landed in Canada or Newfoundland, as constituting a convenient half-way house on the road to the rich American traffic centres. It is by being allowed to collect a portion of that traffic in the United States by the agency of their American connections that our five British cables chiefly maintain their power to live. In return for this privilege allowed us by the Americans, we must grant the Americans the privilege of landing their cables in Canada on the way to Europe, (c) No doubt if the American-owned cables were beating our cables out of the field, it would become a question whether, in spite of the above observations, our Government should allow such cables to utilize British territory for that purpose.

The next point worth noticing is as regards the tariff charged over the Atlantic cables. A message from London to Montreal costs Is. a word. Of this the Government of this country receives about ½d. per word for transmitting the message from London to