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THE TELEPHONE AND NATIONAL EFFICIENCY.
The larger significance of the telephone is that it completes the work of eliminating the hermit and gypsy elements of civilization.

In an almost ideal way, it has made intercommunication possible without travel.

It has enabled a man to settle permanently in one place, and yet keep in personal touch with his fellows.
Until the last few centuries, much of the world was probably what Morocco is to-day--a region without wheeled vehicles or even roads of any sort.

There is a mythical story of a wonderful speaking-trumpet possessed by Alexander the Great, by which he could call a soldier who was ten miles distant; but there was probably no substitute for the human voice except flags and beacon-fires, or any faster method of travel than the gait of a horse or a camel across ungraded plains.