EMPIRE COMMUNICATIONS.

Taranaki Daily News, 12 July 1922, Page 2

EMPIRE COMMUNICATIONS.

IMPROVEMENTS FORECASTED. A " LORD NORTHCLIFFE’S TOUR.' London, June ISpeaking at a luncheon tendered to him by the Empire Press Union upon his return from 'his trip round the world, Lord Northcliffe said that at the present moment the whole system of Empire inter-communication was in a state of flux and change. A few months ago he stayed with the Governor of Indo-China, and found that from a long pole in his garden he could talk to Paris quite easily. Some time later he was staying with that very patient and wise ruler of India, Lord Reading, and found that he could not talk to London at all for three days. There were what were called cable interruptions. There were no cable interruptions with Indo-China, and he trusted that there would, be none between England and the Empire as ■soon as this curious and mysterious system of wireless had been got into some sort of shape.

When he was in America he found it to be in a state of confusion with regard to wireless. We were a slower people, but he was sure that we were equally wise, and he trusted that we should learn from the chaos in America how to handle this new mysterious weapon which might alter the relations of the whole world. At the present time the cable rates to the Far East were pnerous to a degree. They pressed very hard on the newspapers, very hard on the men in business, and particularly hard on the little newspapers; and they had this blank of two or three days at important intervals when one wondered what was going on in Europe, whether anything was wrong, and whether the cable had been cut in the Suez Canal. That would probably be changed, and Jhe thought within twelve months, and that was why he stated that the late Lord Burnham builded better than even he knew when he started trying to improve Imperial communications. That society had never been in a more important position in its existence, and the work that it performed in the next three or four months would have a vital influence on the future.