§ 42. Viscount DUNCANNONasked the Postmaster-General if he will lay upon the Table the full correspondence, if any, which has passed between the British representative of the Goldschmidt system and the Post Office?
§ Mr. HERBERT SAMUELI will lay the correspondence in question, together with other Papers, upon the Table at an early date.
§ 54. Mr. WALTER GUINNESSasked the Postmaster-General whether he will invite tenders for the Imperial wireless chain, based on a guaranteed minimum standard of efficiency, to be laid down by the Post Office, and to be approved by the House of Commons?
§ Mr. HERBERT SAMUELThe Scientific Advisory Committee, over which Lord 871 Parker presided, reported in April last, after full investigation, that the Marconi system was the only system of which it could be said with any certainty that it was capable of fulfilling the requirements of the Imperial chain; and that the Marconi Company alone had practical experience of the sort of long distance work required. Nothing has since occurred so far as I can ascertain to invalidate this conclusion. The representatives of the Goldschmidt system accepted the invitation of the Parker Committee to demonstrate the working of their system, but only over a distance of 382 nautical miles, between Hanover and Slough. Members of the Committee were in attendance at Hanover, and engineers were sent to Slough to watch the tests, but the demonstrators did not succeed in transmitting any intelligible communication of any kind. On seeing the paragraphs recently sent by the company to the Press to the effect that they had established communication between Hanover and Tuckerton in the United States, I at once asked the company to allow the demonstrations to be witnessed by officers of the Post Office and the Admiralty, but the company have replied that they are not in a position to give any demonstrations until the first week in August. In the circumstances I do not propose to invite tenders for the work. The course suggested by the hon. Member would make it impossible to obtain the sanction of the House of Commons to any contract this Session, and would involve a delay of at least another nine months, and probably a year before work on the stations could actually be begun. I am, however, pointing out to the company what under certain conditions the erection of the second three stations of the Imperial chain will be transferred from the original contractors to any others whose system may be proved to be more efficient or more economical. If such proof is forthcoming in the case of the Goldschmidt system within the next few months, I should be very glad to consider the employment of that system for some or all of those stations.
§ Mr. GUINNESSIs the right hon. Gentleman taking advantage of the suggested demonstration at the beginning of August?
§ Mr. SAMUELYes, whenever they are [...]illing to give me a demonstration, I am informing them that I shall be most happy to send officers to witness it.
§ Mr. GUINNESSIn the event of that demonstration proving that they are able to telegraph 3,600 miles, will it then be too late to give them an opportunity of tendering for the whole of the stations?
§ Mr. SAMUELIn the first place it is necessary for them to show that they are able to maintain an effective continuous service, and not merely that a few experiments on any particular days are successful. In any case I am afraid that as Parliament, we hope, may rise in the middle of August, any definite postponement until after tests are made in the first week of August would mean that the House could hardly then deal with it?
§ Mr. GUINNESSIs it not possible to allow them to tender subject to guarantees, and if these guarantees are not carried out, the matter could be dealt with?
§ Mr. SAMUELNo. I do not want guarantees. I want stations that will work.
§ Mr. CHIOZZA MONEYIs it a fact that several years elapsed after the Marconi Company had communicated across the Atlantic before they established a commercial service?
§ 59. Mr. TOUCHEasked whether the Universal Radio Syndicate, Limited, have recently asked for permission to tender for the installation of the Poulsen system in the stations of the Imperial Chain; and whether such permission has been granted?
§ Mr. HERBERT SAMUELI received on Saturday last a request from the Syndicate to be allowed to tender. In reply to the second part of the question I would refer the hon. Member to the answers given on the 10th instant to the questions asked by the hon. and gallant Member for the Western Division of Hampshire and by the hon. Member for Newcastle-on-Tyne in which I explained why the Government is not calling for tenders.
§ 60. Mr. TOUCHEasked the Postmaster-General whether he is aware of any intention to transmit messages from a Marconi station in Norway to America viâ the United Kingdom; whether it is intended that the proposed post office station at Aberdeen, or any other British Government station, should be utilised in connection with such service; and whether there is any proposal or arrangement by which the British Government will receive 873 royalties or other payments from the Marconi Company or from the Norwegian Government in connection with such service?
§ Mr. HERBERT SAMUELNo such proposal has been considered and no arrangement of any kind made.
§ Mr. TOUCHEDo I understand that no British stations will be used?
§ Mr. SAMUELWe have had no communication from the Norwegian Government on the subject of any sort or kind. No such proposal has been made.
§ Captain MURRAYIs it proposed to establish another station near Aberdeen?
§ Mr. SAMUELYes. That is in contemplation.
§ 61. Mr. TOUCHEasked the Postmaster-General whether he is aware that in August last year, when he was endeavouring to secure the ratification of the Marconi contract, the Postmaster-General of Canada entered into an agreement with the representative of the Poulsen system in England for a Transatlantic service between Great Britain and Canada; whether he was aware of the negotiations at that time; and, if so, will he state the reasons for not communicating them to the House; and whether he had any communication with the Postmaster-General of Canada at that time with regard to the same; and, if so, will he state the nature of such communication?
§ Mr. HERBERT SAMUELThe hon. Member is under a misapprehension. The agreement between the Canadian Postmaster-General and the representatives of the Poulsen system was entered into in April of this year and not in August of last year. Mr. Pelletier, who was in England last August, informed me of negotiations in which he was then engaged, but it would then have been obviously improper for me to have communicated to the House negotiations to which I was not a party, which had no relevance to the proposals I had laid before Parliament, and which were still proceeding between the Canadian Postmaster-General and a commercial syndicate. I would add that the Canadian agreement which was signed in April is of a wholly different character from that proposed for the erection of stations for the Imperial Wireless Chain. The Imperial Stations are to be State-owned, but the Canadian Government does not propose to 874 employ the Poulsen Company to erect any station to be owned and worked by that Government. The station is to be erected by the Poulsen Company at their own cost; it will remain the property of the company unless purchased by the Canadian Government at a price to be fixed by arbitration; and it will be worked by the company with their own staff for their own profit and at their own risk. The obligations upon the Poulsen Company under the agreement are to erect stations within a specified period and to transmit telegrams at rates not exceeding specified maxima. The obligations upon the Canadian Government are to grant the necessary licences, to secure certain exemptions from the Canadian Patent Laws relating to the manufacture of apparatus outside Canada, and to take such measures as are in its power to facilitate the transmission of the Company's telegrams over the land lines belonging to the Canadian Telegraph Companies.
Mr. WILLIAM REDMONDHas any guarantee been given by this company to the Canadian Government as regards their contract?
§ Mr. HERBERT SAMUELThere is a guarantee.
§ Mr. HERBERT SAMUELI should like notice of that.
§ Mr. TOUCHEHad the right hon. Gentleman any official correspondence with Mr. Pelletier at that time?
§ Mr. HERBERT SAMUELYes; some communications passed with regard to this proposal.
§ Mr. TOUCHEWill the right hon. Gentleman consider that the treating of these communications as confidential goes a long way to impair the control of this House over matters of national importance; and will he lay the correspondence on the Table, as in the case of the Goldschmidt correspondence?
§ Mr. HERBERT SAMUELNo, Sir; the correspondence has no relation at all to the proposal for the erection of an Imperial wireless chain, and it was never proposed to conduct a Transatlantic service. My correspondence with Mr. Pelletier consisted largely of criticisms of certain proposals in his intended or contemplated agreement with the Poulsen syndicate, which proposals have since disappeared 875 from the arrangement with the Canadian Government. I certainly could not publish any correspondence without the consent of Mr. Pelletier.
§ Mr. TOUCHEWould not the correspondence throw light on the merits of the respective systems?
§ Mr. HERBERT SAMUELNo Sir; none at all.
§ 62. Mr. TOUCHEasked the Postmaster-General whether the results of the experiments between Arlington, Virginia, and the United States steamship "Salem," and between Arlington and Gibraltar, using both the arc and spark transmission, which are referred to in paragraph 19 of the report of the Advisory Committee, have been embodied by Dr. Austin, the head scientific adviser of the United States naval wireless service, in a Report to the effect that for distances of 1,400 miles and upwards the arc system, which is the Poulsen system, using less than half the current radiated by the spark system, was equal to or somewhat better than the spark, and at distances exceeding 2,100 miles in the day time the arc was uniformly louder than the spark; if so, whether he will furnish a copy of such Report to Members of the House; and whether he is aware that after the receipt of Dr. Austin's Report the United States Government awarded the contract for the Panama station, which is to have a range of 3,000 miles, to the American Poulsen Company?
§ Mr. HERBERT SAMUELI have not seen Dr. Austin's Report on the experiments in question, and I am not aware that it has been published. A copy was asked for by my inspector of wireless telegraphy, but was not sent. The general results of the experiments were before the Scientific Advisory Committee when they made their Report, and they were not such as to lead the Committee to conclude that the Poulsen system was capable of fulfilling the requirements of the Imperial Chain. I have no official information as regards the contract for the Panama Station, but am making inquiries.
§ 63. Mr. WALTER GUINNESSasked whether the Postmaster-General will give the names of his Special Committee to which he submitted in 1912 the terms for the Marconi Contract which has since lapsed; whether he has submitted to this Special Committee the terms of the second 876 Marconi Contract which he has now laid before the House, and, if so, the date on which this meeting took place; if this Special Committee has also considered the altered circumstances occasioned by the success of the Goldschmidt Company in establishing Transatlantic communication as foreshadowed by the Advisory Committee of Experts; in that case, will he state what the Report of the Special Committee was; and, if not, will he convoke that body and lay the facts before them before entering into any contract for the wireless chain which will definitely bind the House and the country, despite the existence of a different system which has succeeded in sending messages over a far greater distance and under more difficult conditions?
§ Mr. HERBERT SAMUELThe gentlemen who attended meetings of the Committee which advised me in the course of the negotiations with the Marconi Company prior to the acceptance of their tender in March, 1912, were the High Commissioners of South Africa, Australia, and New Zealand; Captain Muirhead Collins, Official Secretary to the Australian Commonwealth Office; Admiral Charlton, Lieutenant R. Fitzmaurice, Captain M. Fitzmaurice, Captain Hope, Mr. Madge, Mr. Minter, from the Admiralty; Mr. Johnson, from the Colonial Office; Sir Henry Kirk, from the India Office; Mr. Wilkins, from the Treasury; Colonel Macdonogh and Major Seaman, from the War Office; and Sir Alexander King, Mr. Farnall, Mr. De Wardt, Commander Loring, and Mr. Taylor, from the Post Office. The actual terms of the proposed contract were submitted to the various Departments of which these gentlemen were the representatives, and to the High Commissioner for South Africa, and were the subject of official correspondence and conferences during several months. They were not laid before the Committee as a body, as the precise wording of the terms of a contract can be better settled by correspondence and by separate conferences than at the meetings of a large Committee. The same course is being adopted with respect to the terms of the new contract. As I have stated in answer to a previous question, the Company which is experimenting with the Goldschmidt system have not acceded to my request to allow the communication across the Atlantic which they claim to have established to be demonstrated at once in the presence of technical advisers of the Post Office and Admiralty. 877 In these circumstances it would be useless to convene a meeting of any Committee to consider claims which are not substantiated by official inspection.
§ Mr. WALTER GUINNESSMay I ask how many days ago it is that the right hon. Gentleman asked for this demonstration—how many days' notice they considered sufficient?
§ Mr. HERBERT SAMUELThe experiments took place on the 3rd and 4th July. The company communicated to me on 5th July the fact that these experiments had been made. I wrote to them, I think, on 6th or 7th, asking that demonstrations should be made before my officers at the earliest possible date. A telegram was sent on the following day, and another letter was sent two or three days afterwards. Two or three days ago, I think on Saturday, I received a letter from the company saying that they were not in a position to give any demonstration until August.
Mr. W. REDMONDIs it not the fact that excepting the Marconi organisation, none of the other firms mentioned, either Poulsen or Goldschmidt, have got the necessary equipment in existence to enable them to carry out the Imperial wireless chain, and, if the contract were given to either, would it not entail, for that reason, very considerable delay?
§ Mr. HERBERT SAMUELMy information is to that effect. Of course, they may be able to enlist the necessary staff.
§ Mr. CHIOZZA MONEYWith regard to the last part of the question, is it not the case that the statement that, by the Goldschmidt system, messages have been sent "over a far greater distance and under more difficult conditions," rests entirely on an ex-party statement?
§ Mr. HERBERT SAMUELSo far as I am aware, it rests entirely upon Dr. Goldschmidt's statement.