45 SECONDS FROM NORWAY

A query flashed from a wireless station in New York was answered by a station in Norway in 45 seconds. Two minds 3000 miles apart exchanged a thought in the time it frequently takes many of us to produce one.

Historians in pointing back to a period and analyzing the condition of a country at that time find that lack of transportation will account for many evils. The squabbles of the nobles in England before Henry VII may have been due as much to poor roads as to the lack of a strong sovereign. It is conceivable that the American revolution might have been postponed if not avoided by speedier transportation of goods and ideas.

But now it is possible to get the ideas even of a Norwegian as soon as he thinks them; and we can carry goods from one part of the country to another by air at the rate of 225 miles an hour. We are faced by the reverse of the problem confronting us before. Whereas society was once handicapped by lack of transportation, it may now suffer from too much of it. Formerly there was at least time to think, a pause to find the truth between two falsehoods. Now we are hurried along by the pressure of the inventions for communication until there is hardly time to consider what we are communicating. Science has pulled ahead of ideas.

What have we to send by this wireless to Norway? A report of the Ku Klux Klan, or perhaps an account of the censorship of Jurgen? We get in return an even exchange of news of the party machinations in England or the intrigues at Lauzanne, or perhaps Lenine's promise of a capitalistic socialism. It will be recalled what narrow-mindedness was found "45 minutes from Broadway." What was sent to Norway on this trial message was. "How is the weather?"