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upon which the wireless merger was framed.
I, therefore, promised to draft a telegram
in accordance with what was clearly the
general view of the Committee, but made it
clear that I could not commit the Secretary
of State to accept this policy.
I think that the minutes of the
meeting are worth reading, and set out the
arguments reasonably well. The real facts
of the situation of course are that there are
insuperable difficulties at the very heart of
the whole idea of a cable and wireless
merger. New wireless services
are naturally
demanded by British Colonies, especially
when they see Dutch, French and even Chinese
wireless services throwing them into the
background. On the other hand, such services can only obtain revenue at the expense of
the cables and they will accelerate the day when the Company will definitely propose to abandon their cables, and when that happens,
it will be extremely difficult for the various
Empire Goverments to resist a claim for heavy subsidies if the Company are compelled to maintain on the ground of their strategic value,
cables for which there is no real economic
justification in time of peace.
On the whole, I hope that the Secretary of State will feel able to accept the draft telegram as a last attempt to carry through
the policy which we have hitherto followed in
the
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