Sydney, be could follow the variations of "home" politics almost as well as if he had been in London. But my readers may remember that when the cable broke, some little time ago, the Victorian Government utilised the misfortune by an experimental mobilisation of their naval and military forces. They wisely wanted to test how they would have been placed if the breakage had been the work of a hostile power. Yet so quickly do we grow accustomed to the miracles of science, and take them as ordinary matters of course, that Australians require such temporary interruptions of telegraphic communication to realise the time when they knew what was going on in Europe only by means of the monthly mail steamer. It was not so long ago, yet it seems like another era—like the division between ancient and modern colonial history. We were in this condition of all but outer darkness, when the great struggle between France and Germany was fought out. Just picture the excitement when the English mails came in bearing their burden of accumulated news! On August 22, 1872, Mr. Charles Todd, Postmaster-General of South Australia, announced that we were in telegraphic communication with England. When, therefore, the next
