The Pacific commercial advertiser. [volume] (Honolulu, Hawaiian Islands) 1885-1921, 1902-11-08
GRITTY
OVER The
CABLE
Bureaucrats Jump
10 Attack
It.
EXCITED OVER A
COMPACT YARN
Army and Navy Men at Washing
ton Who See Menace in
Mackay Enterprise.

(By Telegraph to the N. Y. Tribune.)
WASHINGTON, October 1S,--Army
and Navy officers attach deep signifi-
canoe to the special dispatch from Ho-
nolulu in the Tribune today announc-
ing an agreement between the British
Colonial Cable Association and the Pa
eiAc Commercial Gable Company to es-
tablish a line between Tanning Island
and Honolulu. They regard such an
agreement as discourteous to the
United States government and as men
acing American interests, not only in
Hawaii, the Philippines and China, but
wherever it is essential that this coun-
try should enjoy telegraphic commun-
ication In the commercial and military
theatre of the Pacific. 1t strengthens
the opinion they have expressed for
the last four years, that a government
line across the Pacific would be the
only means of insuring constant com
munication with Manila or other
American ports, except through the de-
yious, expensive, and easily interrupted
This announcement, they think, fully
confirms the conviction they have so
often expressed that the Cable Trust
has never seriously entertained the
proposition to build Pacific Cable on
which the United States could rely in.
an international emergency, and that
its recent representations to the con-
trary before commit aes of Congress
were, designed solely to deter the gov
ernment from building its own line.
{ The generous terms offered by Presi-
dent Roosevelt to the Pacific CONNER
cial Cable Company through Attorney
General Knox nearly two months ago
have been studiously and insolently
ignored, army and navy officials say,
by the controlling officials of that COM
pany. Nevertheless, reports are of
frequent occurrence in the public press
that the company is going rapidly
ahead to lay its line from San Francisco
10 Honolulu without seeking permission
to land on American territory or pay
ing any attention to the guarantees de-
manded by the executive as prerequi-
site to any and all operations. With
out any legal status in Hawaii, and in
defiance of the President of the United
Estates, the company now arranges with
the British government to land the mil
itary cable there, an undertaking
which is declared by officers to be the
height of impertinence, especially in
view of the following hitherto unwrit-
ten historical incident:
A PROPOSITION REJECTED.
In 1893, when Great Britain was do
ing all in her power to encourage the
construction of the Canadian-Austral
ian cable, connecting all important Pa
cific Ocean possessions and strategic
bases, and when the attitude of the
American administration toward Ha-
waii was peculiar enough to be mis-
understood, the State Department was
sounded by the British minister as to
whether the United States would object
TO the acquisition by Great Britain of
one of the minor islands of the Ha-
waiian group, purely for use as cable
relay station and not for naval pur-
poses It was represented that the
facility of operating a submarine cable
was as the square of its length, and
that the distance from Vancouver to
the nearest British point, Tanning
Island, was $500 knots. much longer
span than any cable in existence Or
proposed, and that the 500 miles saved
by way of Hawaii would remove the
greatest obstacle to the consummation
of the project. The Secretary of State
replied emphatically. in terms which
left no opening for argument, that the
proposition could not be entertained |
for an instant Several years ago the
subject was again cautiously broached, |
and was met with more emphatic re-
buff
Now under the close operating agree
ment which binds all the cable COM |
panies, there would be little or nothing |
TO prevent the British colonial military