CYRUS FIELD CARRIES ON 93 
This argument about the enormous sums spent for mili- 
tary purposes, as compared with the aid given to scientific 
projects, is true even today. Congress begrudged small sub- 
sidies to Morse and Field, who worked to facilitate the trans- 
mission of intelligence. During the Civil War, the benefits of 
telegraphy were too great to be measured. In fact, vast sums 
were lost because the Government did not encourage the 
invention more generously. Governments were slow in rec- 
ognizing the possibilities of scientific aid, as they are even 
today. 
In England, there was more understanding of the need for 
an Atlantic cable than in the United States. An island with 
far-flung colonies and world-wide interests naturally compre- 
hended the advantages of prompt transmission of important 
news more readily than a self-contained republic not yet fully 
settled. It was only Field’s personal magnetism that won finan- 
cial support in America; in England the sporting habit of 
speculating on maritime ventures reinforced the far-seeing 
sagacity that recognized ocean cables as a factor of unusual 
significance. ‘The British governing class was intelligent and 
inclined to encourage new ventures that were well recom- 
mended. 
During the spring of 1862 the directors of the Atlantic 
Telegraph Company tried persistently to persuade the Prime 
Minister, Lord Palmerston, to realize the need for an Atlantic 
cable. Lord Palmerston had sporting proclivities but was get- 
ting old. Furthermore the pronounced sympathy of most aris- 
tocratic Englishmen for the Confederate cause militated 
against such an alliance with the Northern States as the cable 
project would imply. Palmerston himself had attempted to 
bully the American Government on several occasions before 
the war began. 
There was intense feeling against England in New York 
and Washington. Field wrote to his friend Thurlow Weed, a 
prominent American journalist who was in London, saying: 
