Problems of the Pacific 



3*3 



graphic Office of the Navy Department, 

 and may, therefore, be considered au- 

 thoritative on this subject. It will be 

 seen that there are, in the midst of this 

 great ocean, a half dozen points dis- 

 tinctly marked by these converging 

 routes for both steam and sailing vessels, 

 and a closer examination will show that 

 the United States owns practically all of 

 these, and especially those which have 

 harbors of . importance. At Unalaska 

 on the north, Midway Island, the Ha- 

 waiian group, Tutuila, in the Samoan 

 group, and Guam, in the Uadrones, the 

 American flag flies, as it also does at 

 Manila, farther to the west ; and it is 

 generally conceded that Pearl Harbor, 

 in the Hawaiian group, and that of 

 Pango Pango, in the Samoan, are by far 

 the best, if not the only valuable, har- 

 bors in all the mid-Pacific. Curiously, 

 all of these are located upon the natural 

 routes for vessels in direct commerce 

 between the United States and the 

 Orient, and their importance, both to 

 commerce and for naval and strategic 

 purposes, can scarcely be overestimated. 

 My next proposition is that we also 

 possess the most important routes for 

 submarine cables, those great and im- 

 portant aids to commerce. The Pacific 

 Ocean is the only great body of water 

 in the inhabited portions of the globe 

 which the ingenuity of man has not 

 already bridged for the instantaneous 

 transmission of thought. Within the 

 remembrance of the present generation 

 the Atlantic, the Mediterranean, the 

 Indian Ocean, and the Gulf of Mexico 

 have been crossed and recrossed with 

 cable lines by which man speaks with 

 man across thousands of miles of water, 

 while the borders of the great conti- 

 nents in every part of the world have 

 been festooned with loops of cable which 

 connect their coast cities one with an- 

 other and with the commercial centers 

 of every part of the world. But up to 

 this time the task of stretching a cable 

 across the great Pacific, with its 10,000 



miles of continuous water, has not been 

 undertaken. 



The Atlantic is crossed by a dozen 

 lines connecting the United States with 

 England and the continent of Europe ; 

 numerous lines are laid across the Med- 

 iterranean; several also extend through 

 parts of the Indian Ocean, along the 

 eastern coast of Asia and across to Aus- 

 tralia, and shorter loops stretch from 

 city to city along the coasts of Asia, 

 Africa, and North and South America, 

 but the great Pacific is an entire blank 

 in the matter of intercontinental lines. 

 Messages from the United States to the 

 Orient at present go via Europe, through 

 the Indian Ocean, skirting the eastern 

 coast of the Asiatic continent, traveling 

 enormous distances, handled several 

 times, and occupying considerable time 

 in transmission, to say nothing of the 

 high rates of toll which must be paid 

 for this circuitous service. 



The experience of cable builders and 

 operators is that a distance of 3,500 

 miles is about the limit at which cables 

 can be satisfactorily operated without 

 way stations, at which the messages are 

 transmitted from section to section of 

 the line. It is because of this fact and 

 because there are few places in the Pa- 

 cific in which islands are so located as 

 to furnish the necessary way stations 

 for relays that the construction of sub- 

 marine telegraphs across that ocean 

 has not been undertaken. Even where 

 islands exist at such intervals as to jus- 

 tify the attempt, they were so divided 

 in national control that no country or 

 group of capitalists cared to undertake 

 this enormous task. But now all this is 

 changed. The events of the past three 

 years have brought under the control 

 of the United States a line of islands 

 stretching at convenient intervals from 

 the western coast of America to the 

 eastern coast of Asia. The Hawaiian 

 Islands, Wake Island, Guam, and the 

 Philippines form a continuous line of 

 great natural telegraph poles upon 



