American corporation in the transmission between Buenos Ayres and the
cities of Uruguay and Brazil of through messages passing from and
to the United States. Although the matter is complicated by exclusive
concessions by Uruguay and Brazil to foreign companies, there is strong
hope that a good understanding will be reached and that the important
channels of commercial communication between the United States and the
Atlantic cities of South America may be freed from an almost prohibitory
discrimination.

In this relation I may be permitted to express my sense of the fitness
of an international agreement whereby the interchange of messages over
connecting cables may be regulated on a fair basis of uniformity.
The world has seen the postal system developed from a congeries of
independent and exclusive services into a well-ordered union, of which
all countries enjoy the manifold benefits. It would be strange were the
nations not in time brought to realize that modern civilization, which
owes so much of its progress to the annihilation of space by the
electric force, demands that this all-important means of communication
be a heritage of all peoples, to be administered and regulated in their
common behoof. A step in this direction was taken when the international
convention of 1884 for the protection of submarine cables was signed,
and the day is, I trust, not far distant when this medium for the
transmission of thought from land to land may be brought within the
domain of international concert as completely as is the material
carriage of commerce and correspondence upon the face of the waters
that divide them.

The claim of Thomas Jefferson Page against Argentina, which has been
pending many years, has been adjusted. The sum awarded by the Congress
of Argentina was $4,242.35.