N enlisted man of the Signal Corps of the United States Army, snowshoe shod, is harnessing his dogs to a sled outside a close chinked log hut in the Alaskan wilderness. He is making ready for a hard driving dash to the rescue of a prospector who, native report has it, is starving and freezing to death in a hut in the Valley of the Kinnoko.

The soldier is waiting the order to start, waiting for it to come from Washington, the Capital of the United States, five thousand miles away. Thirty minutes before he had asked the War Department for the word of authority to leave his

post on a humane errand, and now momentarily he expects the reply that will give him permission to risk his own life to save that of another. The word comes and the relief expedition starts.

Thirty minutes to Washington and back, five thousand miles! Ten years ago how long would the soldier have waited on the edge of the Kinnoko Valley for an answer to his hurry-up message sent to the Potomac Valley? Before it came he would have counted the days and the weeks and the months, and in the meantime what would the cold and hunger have done to the blizzard-besieged prospector in the wilderness hut?

The picture in part is fancy, for no American would wait thirty minutes or thirty seconds for an order to save life. It is drawn only to show that today the military authorities in Washington are in telegraphic touch with the remotest points in Alaska, and that orders can be transmitted to Nome with virtually the same rapidity that they can be sent to Fort Myer, which lies close to Arlington within sight of the Washington Monument.

The Signal Corps of the United States Army has made this instant communication possible. There are only a few hundred members of the service, but they have completed in the face of forbidding conditions a cable and land line system which army officers of other countries have said, "is unique in the annals of telegraphic engineering." If plotted on the map of the United States this system

would reach from Wyoming to the Bahamas, off the Coast of Florida. The cables used would reach from Newfoundland to Ireland, and the land lines from Washington to Texas.

This achievement of General James Allen, Chief Signal Officer of the Army and the officers and men under his control, won the admiration of Congress, and it was to be supposed naturally that in view of it, the lawmakers would have been willing that the Service should be given opportunity to seek results in other fields in no way foreign to those in which the corps is employed, and yet for two years there was refusal to give the signalmen the modest sum that they asked in order that they might keep abreast of the armies of the world in the science of aviation. Recently by dint of pleas from the service and from the country Congress consented to open its purse.

The United States has brought southeastern Alaska, the Valley of the Yukon and the region of the Behring Straits into instant communications with the entire civilized world. General Adolphus W. Greeley, formerly Chief Signal Officer of the Army, not long ago said, "There yet lacks to complete the dream of half a century ago of telegraphically uniting America and Asia via Behring Strait, a cable to the Asiatic shore and a Russian line of about 1,500 miles to Nikolaevisk." The dream may find realization much more quickly than any man not charged with the electric enthusiasm can believe.

The main Alaska cable and land lines laid and strung by the men of the Signal Corps run under the sea and through the air from Seattle in the State of Washington, to St. Michael. From St. Michael across Norton Sound to Nome the communication is by wireless. This is the route: Cable, Seattle to Sitka, Sitka to Valdez, 1,684 miles. Main land lines from Valdez to Fairbanks, to Fort Gibbon, to St. Michael, 1,068 miles. There

are branch cables from Sitka to Juneau and to Skagway, and from Valdez to Fort Liscum, Seward and Cape Whitshed. Branch land lines run from Gulkana to Eagle City, which is on the boundary line between the British and the American Alaskan possessions.

Within a few weeks a wireless station has been put into commission at Kotlik at the mouth of the Yukon River. The new station is eighty miles from Fort St. Michael with which it is intended to communicate. The Kotlik office will be used to exchange messages with vessels entering Norton Sound from the sea. General Allen in his last report says that the operation of the wireless telegraph stations in Alaska has been of such a character as to warrant consideration being given ultimately to the abandonment of a portion of the land telegraph lines over the routes now covered by wireless, "thus relying on these as the sole means of communication instead of as an auxiliary to the land lines as originally intended.'

During the past year there have been 213 men of the Signal Corps on duty in

Alaska, enough to make a battalion of infantry of ordinary peace time strength. A few soldiers of the line, mainly infantrymen, have been detached for service with the Signal Corps in the Alaskan work. These men in little squads, barely enough in many cases to complete a set of fours, are stationed at long intervals on the rude roads and the blazed trails above which the wires of the telegraph are strung. Nine months of winter each year these soldiers remain cut off from anything save a humming wire to remind them that somewhere men live in cities and go to their work in the companionship of multitudes.

The soldiers of the Signal Corps in Alaska must fight the elements. For two years during the construction of a part of the land lines a little squad of service men made their headquarters in a log hut as primitive in building fashion as any ever thrown up by a pioneer forefather when the tide of migration flowed over the Alleghenies in the New West. Two years, eighteen months of winter, working daily with the thermometer marking degrees way below the zero point, these soldiers stayed there, ap

parently happy with their hardships. They are there today, some of them in log huts, and others in better quarters but with no other change in their surroundings to make lighter the load of isoiation which they bear. Danger comes to these men frequently and difficulties daily, and it is theirs to test the truth of Byron's line, "There is society where none intrudes."

The cable line from Seattle to Sitka and thence to Valdez, with the branches now established, was laid under the direction of General James Allen and Major Edgar Russel, who were chosen for the work because of their cable laying experiences in the Philippines and of their high knowledge of electric engineering. The cableship, Burnside, was brought from China where it was undergoing repairs. The cable was manufactured in New Jersey and transported around Cape Horn, a distance of 12,000 miles. The work of laying was prosecuted in large part under the most unfavorable circumstances, gales and bad weather generally delaying operations and frequently endangering not only the success of the work but the safety of the

ship and the lives of the men engaged in the duty. Success finally came and Seattle talked to Sitka, and Sitka talked to Valdez.

In the service of cable laying a detachment of the Signal Service did the more arduous and technical work "with such success as to reflect new credit on the resourcefulness of the American soldier."

In writing of the cable laying an officer of the Signal Service has said: "The celerity with which the Valdez-Sitka cable of over five hundred miles in length was put under contract, manufactured, transported, and laid, illustrates American possibilities. Congress appropriated the money on April 24, the contract was awarded, the cable was manu

factured in New Jersey, transported by rail and sea, installed between Valdez and Sitka and thrown open to commercial business in five months and twelve days."

The crew of the Burnside was composed of Filipinos, and there also was a detachment of "Little Brown Brothers" who were used as cablemen. General Allen has commended them "for activity, willingness, thoroughness and reliability," and he has added, "the previously expressed good opinion of the services of the Filipinos as crew and cable men has been strengthened by late experiences."

The cable lines of the Alaskan system are "safe down under the water." The