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ments, who then resolved to establish the Pacific cable. That act cannot now be undone, and the completed line of " Empire cables " is but a natural corollary thereto. It is not denied that Australasians have been indebted to the company for giving them the first telegraphic connection with the outer world; but that historical event occurred a third of a century ago. The company has been already rewarded for its enterprise, and it is not now proposed that any of the company's cables or property be assumed for public use without giving fair and full compensation therefor. However deserving its enterprise in the first instance, however profitable that enterprise for many years proved, at this stage in the history of the nations it is impossible to recognise that the company possesses an indefeasible right to obstruct measures vital to the free development of a great World-Empire. . I have elsewhere pointed out that it must not be supposed that the establishment of a single trunk line of State cables around the globe would irretrievably ruin, or even in the end do any real injury to, the private companies. In some respects it would be an actual advantage and benefit to them. It is quite true that there would be a great change, a new development approaching a revolution in business generally, by the introduction of the chain of " Empire cables," but the new trunk line of telegraphic communication would intersect the cables of the private companies at a number of points and prove an actual feeder to them. It would furnish abundant telegraph traffic at low rates, for dissemination by these private cables acting as branches. An Imperial Intelligence Department. An interesting phase of the subject is brought to light by the recent visit of Sir Frederick Pollock and his colleagues to Canada. These gentlemen came to the Dominion as envoys from England to explain the conclusions reached by a large committee of Englishmen of position representing various interests. The proposals of Sir Frederick Pollock and those associated with him are given in the following summary statement which appears in an article by that gentleman, on Imperial organization, published after his return to England, in the Nineteenth Century for December, 1905 :— (1.) An Advisory Council, including representatives of all parts of the Empire, and presided over, preferably, by the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, to be formed on the basis of the existing Colonial Conferences. (2.) A permanent secretarial office attached to the President of the Imperial Council, to acquire and systematize information material to the common concerns of the Empire for the use of the Cabinet and the Council, and, so far as might be expedient, for publication. (Since described as an Imperial Intelligence Department.) (3.) A permanent Imperial Commission, whose members could represent all such branches of knowledge and research outside those matters pertaining exclusively to any Department as would be profitable in Imperial affairs; they would normally be put in action by the Prime Minister appointing special committees to deal with the particular questions on the request of the Imperial Council. Sir Frederick Pollock and Mr. Geoffrey Drage spoke at public meetings in Toronto, Montreal, Winnipeg, and other places. They addressed the Canadian Club in Ottawa, on the 21st October, 1905, and directly afterwards I submitted the views I hold in a letter to the Club. I did the same on the 26th October in a second letter. Both letters were printed and to a limited extent circulated. Copies were sent under a covering letter from me to several well-known gentlemen, some of whom are practically removed from active Dominion politics; and, as it was regarded of public importance that the wisest available advice should be obtained, the hope was expressed to these gentlemen that they would be good enough to give briefly their views. I have been favoured with more than a hundred replies, and they reveal the fact that remarkable unanimity prevails on essential points. With scarcely an exception, the view is held that the true policy for the several Governments is to inaugurate adequate means by which the people of the Empire may obtain and continue to maintain neighbourly intercourse with each other. The large majority of the gentlemen consulted emphatically declare that the best possible means to accomplish that object is some such plan as that outlined in the letters to the Canadian Club which are appended hereto. All who have given the subject full consideration appear to think that the organization of an Imperial Intelligence Department on a comprehensive scale is the first necessity, possibly the only means by which harmonious and permanently satisfactory relations between all the units of the Empire can be had. As indicated elsewhere, the Intelligence Department should be. very much more than a mere Bureau in which collected information would be deposited for safe-keeping, and perhaps rarely seen by any one other than the gentleman in charge. It should be established in the common interest," and especially for the benefit of the many. It should be a widespread organizsrtion, coextensive with the Empire, dedicated to the collection, transmission by cable, and publication in a free-handed manner, of intelligence on any subject of general interest for the information and education of the British people in every quarter of the globe. The Free Exchange of Empire News. In addition to a central Board in the British Metropolis, there should be local Boards and agencies in each self-governing community, where desired information would be collected. It w-ould be the duty of each Board to take proper means to arrange and edit the information for free transmission by cable to the other Boards, and by them made available for simultaneous publication in the daily or weekly journals in all the great cities of the Empire. For further