(e) That the rates charged to the public, when sufficient for a proper return on the capital at stake, and the provision of a proper reserve fund, shall not exceed a specified maximum, and that Imperial and Colonial Government messages shall have priority, and be sent at half the ordinary rates.
(f) That in case of war, rebellion, or other emergency, the Government shall have power to take possession of and work the line on its own account for so long as it shall see fit, paying compensation.
(g) That the agreement shall not be assigned, or underlet, without the consent of the Treasury.
These powers, judiciously and temperately exercised by a committee of all the Government departments concerned—viz., the Treasury, Foreign Office, Admiralty, War Office, India Office, Colonial Office, Board of Trade, and Post Office—are ample to secure the interests of the public against the interests of any section of the community.
Conclusion.
Such, then, is the marvellous and world-wide system organized, in somewhat more than a generation, by private citizens of Britain. Viewed in its broadest light, their enterprise has been during modern times the prime agent in that adjustment of men's passions which is called diplomacy, and in that equilibrium between the works and wants of man which is called trade. So much the world owes them. But if the nation asks what they have done for her, they can say that, annihilating time and space on behalf of her, they have given unity to the disunion of her unfettered peoples, and substance to her dream of an Imperial commonwealth; and that, identifying our own good with the good of others, they have served all nations for the sake of their own.
