[1] Ante, [Chapter I]. [↑]
[2] Kipling: The Five Nations. [↑]
[3] It can hardly be disputed that the British generals in the late war in South Africa would have done well to cut the cables altogether, or at all events reserve them exclusively for their own use. There is very good evidence that, in spite of the interdiction of “coded” messages, information passed both ways between the enemy and his agents in Europe. The resolute manner in which the Japanese kept newspaper correspondents away from the scene of action until no action remained for them to correspond about, shows conclusively what will become of the war-reporter during the few remaining decades which separate us from the final disappearance of moribund war itself from the planet. [↑]
[4] Ante, [Chapter III]. [↑]
[5] Ante, [Chapter IV]. [↑]
CHAPTER VI
UTILISING THE SEA
Except for a small tribute in the shape of fish food and certain salts the ocean is to-day almost a dead loss to the world, and what is worse, the greatest of all obstacles to progress. It separates us from our kin, wrecks our ships, claims a yearly toll of dead, and is barren, fruitless, a mere receptacle for garbage. A hundred years hence we shall have awakened to these facts and found means to make “the caverns vast of ocean old” something better than a subject for the poet and a resting-place for the dead whom it murders.