Communication

Atlantic.

The Radio Corp. of America announced that within a month it would place a "beam" radio service insuring high speed and privacy at the disposal of U. S. businessmen desirous of communicating with London. The announcement came as the fourth in a series of transatlantic communication improvements within a year. Last summer the Western Union Co. completed laying the second of two loaded or "permalloy" cables across the Atlantic capable of carrying 2,500' code letters per minute each (TIME, July 19, 1926).

Last autumn the Marconi Co. opened a "beam" radio service between Canada and England (TIME, Nov. 1, 1926). Last January the American Telephone & Telegraph Co. inaugurated actual exchanges of the human voice by telephone between London and Manhattan eek there was announced a step towards a parallel development of communication westward from the U. S. President Newcomb Carlton of the Western Union declared that his company was ready to lay a transpacific cable like its two new Atlantic cables. With radio so enormously developed laymen marvelled that so shrewd a businessman as Newcomb Carlton was taking so ambitious a stride in the cable field. But the science of communication has developed no faster than the demand for communication. The press especially will file heavily on Mr. Carlton's western extension and he sees the sun of U. S. trade fast rising in the orient.

Across the Pacific there is now but a single cable, controlled jointly by the U. S. Commercial Pacific Co. and by English, Dutch, Danish and Japanese companies. This present cable laid a quarter century ago can carry only 100 letters per minute. During the present turmoil in China it has been found by the Government as well as by the U. S. press and business about as inadequate as a one-fingered typist at a political convention.

Western Union engineers have long since completed their surveys of alternative routes for a new Pacific cable to carry 2,500 letters per minute. They can put it down alongside the Commercial Pacific sections from San Francisco to Honolulu, to Midway Island, to Guam, to Manila, to ShanghaiOSE_P]

Or the long nerve of commerce could be spun out along the great circle route from Seattle to the Aleutian Islands, to Hako date, to Shanghai, to Manila ast difficulty of cable companies is obtaining the necessary government permits to bring their lines ashore.

The southern route touches only U. S. territory all the way to Shanghai and would therefore seem the more logical from a diplomatic point of view, requiring only U. S. licenses. But none knows better than Newcomb Carlton that diplomacy has little to do with logic. During difficulties which arose when he was laying a cable between the U. S. and the Barbados in 1919 he learned not to expect from the U.S. State Department what he calls "the prompt crisp business decisions so essential to American enterprise." Should delays arise over landing licenses for the southern route he might prefer a "prompt crisp business decision" from Japan to let him inaugurate a prompt, crisp, serviceable mode of talk across the Pacific. He once told a Senate committee that he "never found any great satisfaction in making any complaint against any government department any more than I find satisfaction in charging into a hayrick."