Page:The empire and the century.djvu/359

 commercial and social business depends on the secrecy of communications. Moreover, the present fancy price put on the electric spark is prohibitive to all but a small fraction of the community.

But the latest invention promises to combine the rapidity of the telegram with the privacy of the letter. A talented Italian engineer is erecting apparatus for propelling a box containing letters in a few minutes from Rome to Naples. He promises to send letters from London to Manchester in five minutes, and to Paris in twenty minutes. At the same rate he will doubtless forward them to New York in less than four hours, and to India during the day. This invention, if successful, promises to be the climax of postal improvement, and will be hailed as a blessing by all but the monopolists who still charge 3s. a word for a cablegram to Australia.

Personally, I am convinced that the solution of the great problem we have considered—how to enable the minds of men to commune together at will while their bodies are separated by vast oceans—is merely a question of time. The day, I believe, is not far distant, though I may not live to see it, when the peasant in Kent, or Surrey, or Kerry will enjoy as a birthright, a precious privilege, electrical communication, at a trifling cost, with his brother peasant in Canada and Australia. Until that day arrives we must be content to speed our splendid mail-packets East, West, and South, and to remember that the many millions still ruthlessly sentenced to mental separation by avaricious capitalists are, none the less, faithful sons of the Empire, true to the old flag, and fondly attached to the old Fatherland.

If I am accused of grumbling over the magnificent results achieved, let me point to the general feeling that still more magnificent achievements are possible, and are, indeed, long overdue. Let me quote the first speech made in London by the distinguished statesman who has recently been appointed American Ambassador