26 Telephone Systems of the Continent of Europe 



pose the following plan as being both practicable and calculated 

 to bring conviction in its train. 



As before stated, the Post Office cannot possibly acquire the 

 whole business of the National Telephone Company before 

 December 31, 1897. In the interim period there is plenty of 

 time for a municipality to show what can be done in the direction 

 of low rates and improved service. Let two or three municipali- 

 ties be licensed on the condition that metallic circuits are em- 

 ployed throughout, so that, in the event of an ultimate Post Office 

 purchase, the municipal exchanges will fit in properly with, and 

 make part and parcel of, the postal system. By the end of 1897 

 such experience will be gained, if the municipalities go wisely to 

 work, as will put an end to all quibbles as to the sufficiency of a 

 5/. rate. Such a test should be welcomed by all parties, whether 

 for or against low rates, really wishing for a settlement of the 

 question. 



But the author doubts whether the Post Office realises the 

 importance of the subject of national telephony. Speaking in 

 the House on March i, 1895, the Postmaster-General (' Daily 

 Chronicle,' March 2, 1895) said that 'the telephone could not, 

 and never would be, an advantage which could be enjoyed by the 

 large mass of the people. He would go further and say if in a 

 town like London or Glasgow the telephone service was so inex- 

 pensive that it could be placed in the houses of the people, it 

 would be absolutely impossible. What was wanting in the tele- 

 phone service was prompt communication, and if they had a large 

 number of people using instruments they could not get prompt 

 communication and yet make the telephone service effective.' 



What can be expected from a department whose chief enter- 

 tains opinions such as these ? What hope can be entertained 

 when the fountain of knowledge is thus found frozen at its source ? 

 Let the reader turn to the Swedish, Norwegian, and Swiss (with 

 its parochial telephone stations) sections of this book, and judge 

 whether Mr. Arnold Morley really knows so much of what is 

 passing in the world as to justify his assumption of the role of 

 prophet. The ' could not and never would be ' is strongly 

 suggestive of the predictions about railways and telegraphs and 

 steamboats which used ^o be made when those inventions were 



