THE "ALL-RED" ROUTE.

Otago Witness, Issue 2813, 12 February 1908, Page 15

THE "ALL-RED" ROUTE.

SIR THOMAS SUTHERLAND'S VIEWS. (Fboh Ottr Own Correspondent.)

LONDON, December 13 At the sixty-seventh annual general meeting of the P. and O. Company, held in London the day before yesterday, the chairman (Sir Thomas Sutherland), in the course of his opening speech, referred at some length to the scheme of an All-red roue between London and New Zealand, and also to the intention of the P. and O. Company ,with regard to the Suez mail service and new steamers. Sir Thomas said : "It being a necessity of the mail service that we should contract for new ships, we have contracted for three new ships of the Moldavia class on what I consider to be favourable terms, and for a fourth ship of a special kind— a 19-knot express vessel— to run between Aden and Bombay, also on satisfactory terms. I may say that we considered very carefully in connection with this lastnamed vessel" whether we should apply the tuibine system of machinery, but we fo un - d it would increase the prime cost of the ship and the consumption of coal, and coal costing now between Aden and Bombay 30s per ton— these were two important considerations which led us, for the time being at all events, not to adopt the turbine machinery. You will remember that last year we were threatened with a. new Australian service of an imposing character in fact, a very ambitious scheme, ana in powerful hands.— but that scheme perished, as you no doubt are aware •stillborn, as some of us anticipated would be the case, and that was certainly the best possible result for all concerned, and most assuredly so for the investors who intended to place their money in it. "The Australian mail contract that runs alternately with our own has been asrain given to our old friends, the Orient Company, and we are vcrv glad that that should be the case. But now we are threatened with another nail in our cotnn —we are threatened, as I daresay you may have read in the newspapers, with what is called the 'All-red route'— a. scheme which we beard a great deal about at the time of the late Colonial Conference, and which is to run express ships like the Lusitania and the Mauretania, via Canada, to New Zealand and Australia. Well, it has been the ambition of Canada for many years to have an express service of this character, and I myself have been applied to once or twice in connection with the project, but up to the present time nobody has been willing apparently to meet the necessary expenditure in connection with it. To extend an express service to Isew Zealand and Australia would, indeed demand gigantic resources, and it would be a matter very interesting indeed to hnd out where those resources are to be found " There is another question which arises in connection with the projeot The Ui<s-ta-nce between Vancouver and Welhnston in New Zealand is. in round figures. oiK nautical miles, and how express steamers are to be built in order to carry coaf for that distance is one of those engineering problems which, 1 believe, is at the present moment insoluble, and I have, therefore, not been verj much surprised to see by correspondence in the newspapers that there is a gradual toning down of the idea of this

express speed for the Pacific part of the service, and it has been suggested that the ships engaged in the service should coal at Honolulu. But. good heavens ! if the ships are to coal at Honolulu, what becomes of the ' All-red route ' ? for Honolulu is an American port, and the ' Allred route ' would, therefore, a-ppear to me to be a phrase merely to throw dust in the eyes of a-n innocent public. When Pacific development is talked about, there is always something Paid about the eventuality of war closing the Mediterranean, and the route in which we are interested — and which, by the way, is far more an all-red route than the route which requires steamers to coal a-t Honolulu, — there is always some allusion to the risk of war in the^e circumstances. But the mail contract which we have entered into recently, and. I may soy. contracts ever antecedent to that, required us in the event of war to transfer our steamers to whatever voyage or whatever line the Government required for the time being. Whether, in case of war, we should have to transfer our steamers to the Atlantic or to the Pacific is one of those questions, of course, which no one can express an opinion about at present ; but there is the power existing for the Government at any moment to require us to enter a specific trade if it should be necessary. " While it appears to me that this project, so far as Canada is concerned, is a most legitimate project, although a very costly one, yet co far as the Pacific voute is concerned there is no possible revenue which can be obtained in order to maintain it, because, of course, these steamers could merely carry passengers, and so far as the passaere trade to Australia and to New Zealand is concerned, it is utterly inadequate at the present moment to meet the requirements of the numerous lines which are now running to those great colonies. Therefore, if this service were to be established, it could only be established at the expense of the Suez Canal lines, in which you and I and so many others are interested."