Further, if a cable is disturbed for tapping purposes the fact is likely to be known at the terminal stations. On the other hand, to intercept or block a wireless message has always been, so far, a comparatively simple business; indeed, most of the wireless' that is carried on may be said to be under unofficial observation daily. With the latter, it is also open to anyone to send out extremely disturbing messages or symbols such as might, in effect, entirely nullify other messages. Then, again, as we already know, apart from being a ready prey to gales, etc., radio stations, even though placed well in shore, must always-with the prevailing high masts or towersform a more or less easy target for shooting down from a distance. Unlike a wireless station, with its at present essential exposure, there is no reason why a cable station, or cable hut, should not be underground, out of the fire of a possible enemy. Further, in the event of an attack on a cable station or hut, the line can even be worked from a small boat in emergencies. On the other hand, once a wireless station or tower has been shot or blown down, wireless operations are entirely brought to a close until the station or tower has been rebuilt-an operation which may take several weeks, if not months. Thus, the deep-sea cable is still the surest means of communication, surer than the shallow-water cable and also surer than wireless telegraphy.*

From what has been said it will be seen that the belligerent has little difficulty in picking up other people's wireless messages, and that natural conditions also form a source of interruption. On the other hand, the security of receiving messages is correspondingly poor. The cable is, indeed, still at a distinct advantage as regards regular, uninterrupted, and indeed invariable, day and night service, and is practically independent of weather vagaries and climatic conditions. With radiotelegraphy that state of things cannot be said to prevail at present, though very great advances have been made of late in this direction. For instance, when the Marconi Company first established their trans-Atlantic service,

* Cables not being affected unfavourably by tropical, or weather, conditions, it is not necessary-as with wireless'-to stipulate in agreements for the cessations of work during temporary periods when the atmosphere may be affected by serious electrical disturbances.'

messages could scarcely be sent by day at all; now, however, a more or less continuous service has been provided. But 'atmospherics' (electricity in the atmosphere causing discharges, of an especially powerful character in the case of thunderstorms, etc.) are still a constant source of trouble in all wireless work, whereas cables are practically immune to such disturbances, forming, indeed, what may be termed a closed circuit.' In the matter of accuracy the cable is, as yet, at a similar advantage. As regards working speed, the superiority hitherto associated with the cable is now in some doubt; for more than one wireless system is capable of working at even greater speed than any existing cable. This, however, has not been demonstrated on extreme ranges. Moreover, it must be remembered that, if traffic conditions warranted it, a cable could, by means of a larger insulated conductor, achieve far higher speeds, more or less approximating to those on a land-line; and, if the rates were considerably lowered, this course would no doubt be pursued, within certain mechanical and financial limitations. Where the cable has still the advantage is in the effective working speed maintained, say, throughout a day, owing to the far less repetition involved. This is largely due to certain external and unavoidable interruptions of one sort or another, which seriously affect the regular progress of wireless work, but do not occur with cable telegraphy.

Though wireless' has proved itself of great use to our navy under normal conditions we have not yet, ourselves, had any experience of it in warfare. On the other hand, it is notorious that nearly all messages from the seat of the recent Turco-Italian war came by cable rather than by 'wireless.' As evidence, too, of the present superiority of even shallow-water cables to wireless,' it may be observed that, wherever these have been cut during recent wars, they have been replaced since by other cables rather than by 'wireless,' notwithstanding the somewhat greater cost of the cable and the fact that 'wireless' is the newest development of telegraphy.*

This is no doubt in part accounted for by the fact that it takes so much less time to lay a cable than to establish a complete wireless station with its high mast or tower.

Taking facts as they are to-day, and comparing the relative merits of telegraphy by cables and by 'wireless,' we are led to the conclusion that each has its independent sphere. Whereas the cable still has the advantage in the matter of sureness, accuracy and secrecy, a wireless system can be established at less cost. Thus, the tariff of the latter should be lower on these two accounts than that of the former. We have an example of this in the case of the Marconi Trans-Atlantic service, where the rates are now half those charged by the cables serving between the same points.* Excellent work as wireless telegraphy has done and is doing, it is difficult to recognise in it at present such merits as would justify us in substituting it for cables; the fact being that efficiency of service is, as a rule, of greater moment in telegraphy than economy. When wireless' is non-interruptible, except by the eaves-dropper, and less open to outside interference by natural causes, then may the days of the cable be over-for strategic purposes at any rate. It only remains to be said that, if cables were to be supplemented in each case by radio-telegraphy, instead of by another cable, an eminently practical comparison of the services in every respect would be thereby afforded.

In conclusion, all that has been said above seems to indicate beyond a doubt that our Imperial telegraphs, of whatever form, would be best administered on a uniform basis by a permanent Government Board of Control, with suitable representatives of all the departments involved, including, of course, every branch of the Empire concerned. The establishment of such an authority, or at any rate of a permanent advisory board, has for some time appeared to be especially desirable in the case of wireless telegraphy, in view of its transitional condition; and it should be remembered that this condition, in the present immature state of the science, is likely to continue for a considerable period.

CHARLES BRIGHT.

* At one time there was in reality very little difference between the two charges; but, since the Post Office have more completely recognised the Marconi Trans-Atlantic system, and service instructions no longer have to be paid for, the apparent difference has become an actual difference.

Art. 8.-THE AUTHOR OF EREWHON.'

1. The Note-Books of Samuel Butler. With Portrait and Poems. Edited by H. F. Jones. London: Fifield, 1912. 2. Alps and Sanctuaries of Piedmont and the Canton Ticino. By Samuel Butler. Illustrated by the Author, Charles Gogin and H. F. Jones. New and Enlarged Edition with Author's revisions and Index, and an Introduction by R. A. Streatfeild. London: Fifield, 1913.

3. The Humour of Homer, and other Essays. By Samuel Butler. Edited by R. A. Streatfeild. With Portrait, and a Sketch of the Life of the Author by H. F. Jones. London: Fifield, 1913.

4. The Fair Haven. New Edition, re-set and edited with an Introduction by R. A. Streatfeild. London: Fifield, 1913.

And other works by the same author.

WHEN Samuel Butler died in June 1902, the measure of his reputation was given by an article in the Times,' regretting that so talented a man had not done more. The estimate then given now seems quite beside and far below the mark. Every year Samuel Butler emerges more clearly as one of the rare, incontestable personalities in literature, who affect permanently the thought and temper of all predisposed to their influence; and these are already many. Indeed, the first impression made by his Note Books,' which date from the sixties, may well be that many of Butler's ideas are precisely those which are at the present moment in the air,' and by in the air' people really mean in the papers or other men's books. To many readers the tone and substance of many of Butler's notes will be familiar, so familiar that they may go on to question the subversive originality of several writers younger than Butler.

·

Mr Bernard Shaw has pointed out his own debt to Butler. His preface to Major Barbara (1909) was one of the earliest and most effectual statements of Butler's claim to a wider recognition. In this preface Mr Shaw insisted that Butler,

in his own department' was the greatest writer of the XIXth Century'... 'It drives one' (he continues) 'almost to

despair of English literature when one sees so extraordinary a study of English life as Butler's posthumous "Way of All Flesh" making so little impression that when, some years later, I produce plays in which Butler's extraordinarily fresh, free and future-piercing suggestions have an obvious share, I am met with nothing but vague cacklings about Ibsen and Nietzsche, and am only too thankful that they are not about Alfred de Musset and George Sand. Really, the English do not deserve to have great men.' ('Dramatic Works,' Vol. xv, p. 161.)

Both

The most comprehensive description of Samuel Butler as a writer is that he is a humorous philosopher. As he said of himself, had he been a race-horse he might have been described as out of 'The Analogy' by 'Hudibras.' The interdependence of his philosophy and his humour is indeed often so complete that we may be puzzled to decide whether he was a philosopher who happed upon explanations which would justify humour, or a born humorist who set out in search of a philosophy to explain the way things naturally struck him. processes had a share in his work. He saw jokes where no one else saw them because, at once sceptical and curious, he looked at everything in his own way; and things would occur to him first as jokes, which afterwards impressed him as perfectly true. Butler's sense of humour often performed the same service for him that the dove did for Noah in the Ark. It flew out into the unknown, bringing back to him an indication that he would soon find solid ground beneath his feet.

The humorous philosopher is rare, but when he comes his influence quickly spreads. We laugh with him, not taking him seriously as a teller of truths, and lo! in spite of that, if there is consistent thought behind his wit, we have caught his way of thinking. This accounts for the rapidity and extent of Butler's influence --although even yet he has not been thoroughly read—and also for the fact that his reputation still tarries behind it. The difficulty of estimating his life's work lies, not in his having wasted his talents, as his contemporaries were inclined to suppose, but in his having employed them so busily and on so many subjects. Before he died he enumerated his own 'finds'; and to quote that list is the