case £300,000, the rates shall be reduced at stated periods. This method is already in satisfactory working order, as already shown in the case of South Africa, India, and Australasia. Under it great reductions of rate have been effected.
The Right Imperial Policy and the Wrong.
From this somewhat long and complex narrative the reader will now have been able to form his own opinion as to the real position of British cable enterprise in every region of the world. Without presuming to dictate to others, let me say that all the facts radiating and converging, as it were—whether from Canada, or the West Indies, or India, or Africa, or Australia, or the Far East—point to one and the same conclusion of the most vital import. That conclusion is that, whereas formerly British cable enterprise had to contend with few rivals, now it is actively assailed, and will undoubtedly be still more actively assailed in the future, by a host of able and ambitious competitors. That stem fact must dominate and direct our views as to what the policy of this country should be in this connection. I must state with the utmost deliberation and the utmost emphasis at my command, that if British cable enterprise is to be further competed with by its own Government, it will disappear from the oceans. If, while Germany and France use the funds of the State to subsidize and support German and French cables, Great Britain similarly uses her national credit, as is the case of the Pacific cable, against her own people, then British enterprise, hopelessly overweighted by such an overwhelming combination, will roll up its cables and sell them for what they are worth.
Turning from that policy as being utterly disastrous, there is a second policy to be considered—namely, that the State should acquire the cables of the Empire by purchase. The committee of 1902, presided over by
