navy to-day stands first m wireless and holds the record for long-distance communication. Our merchant marine is also getting the advantage of competition and receiving wireless service at reasonable rates, while the English merchant marine 1s compelled to use the Marconi system or none, and at whatever price demanded.
As to the grievance of the government with respect to interference, we may cite a case that happened on the Sound last fall. A government message was being sent from Washington to Newport via Fire Island (all land stations); complaint was made because Sound boats interfered with the transmission, and it was asked that boat work should cease when government plants were sending. In time of peace, and when both the Western Union and Postal Telegraph Companies are rendering efficient service between Washington and Newport, is it just to make such a demand and use wireless to the detriment of the service of boats which are dependent wholly upon the wireless?
[1]Any regulation of wireless telegraphy should be based on a full recognition of the fact that the art is now in its infancy, and that its proper development demands freedom from every unnecessary restraint. Assuming that the government has some sort of prescriptive right to an art with which a long line of scientists and inventors has endowed the world, it does not follow that this right- ↑ From editorial in Electrical World, March 21 1908.
