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Show The Telegraph Girts tho Earth. And now electricity has ushered in an era more wondrous still. Trolley cars run through the streets of Seoul and Na-goya. Na-goya. The Empress-Dowager of China wires her decrees to tho provincial governors. Telegraph lines belt the globe, enabling even the provincial Journal Jour-nal to print the news of the entire world during the preceding twenty-four hours. We know today what occurred yesterday yester-day in Toklo and Beirut, Shanghai and Batanga. The total length o'f all telegraph tele-graph lines In the world Is 4.90S.021 miles, the nerves of our modern civilization. It is not merely that Europe has 1,76-1,790 miles, America 2.616.51S miles, and Australia Aus-tralia 277.479 miles, but that Africa has 99,409 miles and Asia 310.6S5 miles. I found the telegraph In Japan and Korea, In China and the Philippines, In Burma, India, Arabia, Egypt, and Palestine. Pal-estine. Camping one night In far northern north-ern Laos, Slam, after a toilsome ride on elephants, I realized that I was 12,600 miles from home, at as remote a point, almost, as It would be possible for man to reach. All about was the wilderness, relieved only by the few houses of a small hamlet. But walking into that tiny village, I found, at the police station, sta-tion, a telephone connected with the telegraph ofllce at Chiengmai, sq that, though I was on the other side of tho planet, I could have sent a telegram to my New York office In a few minutes. Nor was this an exceptional experience, for the telegraph Is all over Siam, as Indeed In-deed it is over many other Asiatic lands. From the recesses of Africa comes the report that the Kongo telegraph line, which will ultimately stretch across the entire belt of Central Africa, already runs SOO miles up the Kongo river, from the ocean to Kwamouth, the Junction of the Kassel and Kongo rivers. Arthur Judson Brown, In the Review, of Reviews. |