The Shanghai Post Office has been so much in the limelight of public criticism of late that an inside study mich aa ts riven careers Losier of its performances, jin a special article, may be wel-leone, For some inscrutable rea-ison, known only to the erudite student of human nature, wrath against the Postal Servic of the most popular emotions. This is as true of London, of New York, of Paris as of Shanghai, The assumption seems to be that Post Office, having been swept and garnished for the fell work, takes unto itself numerous devils and then proceeds to. play Old Nick with the correspondence of its clients.
So it interrupts the smooth course of lovers' epistolary effort. A day goes by without the usual" delivery—sadness, doubt, misunderstanding and loss faith ensue. Repair is made ultimately by the happy discovery that the missing letter has been "lost in the post." Invitations to dinner vanish into thin air when, they have reached the Post Office,' The only form of letter which is certain to be delivered is that which demands "an immediate remittance by return of post otherwise......".. That seems to be the general character of the indictment. There are of course, variations—such as the sugges. Hon that correspondence is tam: pered with for political reasons lor the notion that the wages of {the Post Office official can be pleasantly supplemented by judicious recourse to the contents of remit tance letters or the ingenious theory that a postman on his beat is suddenly driven by deep depression to throw away his load into some convenient creek, rather than to toil through the' mono-anous ritual of getting rid of it. piecemeal from door to door. Obviously the prevalence of this theory has its advantages, It provides an unfailing topic of conversation at dinner and cock~ {ail parties. It gives the assidulous contributor to the correspon dence columns of the newspaper fan "easy" subject, Tt presents an almost irrefutable cover to per-* Isonal delinquencies or omission:
The Post Office is rarely articulate. Otherwise it would carry the war into the critics' camp. Perhaps the public does not realise that the arrangements made to protect it against its own shortcomings—infirm covers, {aul packing, negligent sealing, alleg ble addresses—are so elaborate land occupy so large a part Post Ofice economy. On this and lather points. the article to-day may be illuminating. It is surely pertinent to observe that an organisation which takes so much 8 to ensure accuracy of transmission is not going to allow itself to be defeated by deliberate Iwaywardness. Moreover it is possible to attribute to the organisers of the Postal Services (who undertake to deliver a postcard leven safely in the inaccessible wilds of Szechuen, Tibet, of even bandit-ridden areas and fulfil their pledge) a reasonable mea sure of alertness in guarding against the dire perils of a journey from Soochow Creek to Tunsin Road—a distance perhaps of six whole miles, from pillar-box to Post Office and from Post Office the addressee's letter box. Scepticism on such a point is not liar to Shanghai, In Slocumyy-the-Wold it may be found that letters will be posted for London with supreme confidence; ithe notion that a letter posted by the Vicarage for the Manor House can be promptly delivered, if delivered at all, apt to be greeted with delighted ridicule. Curiosity is often thought to be at work in post lotices to the disturbance of the: correspondence. Here again it plain that the very familiarity of the sorters with the mass of unruly matter passing through their hands firmly keeps at bay emotion "which would find vent in delaying the work in hand and so adding to the hours of labour, Censorship concern of the Post Office but, apparently, it works with a very limited term of reference, Nor is it allowed to operate in the free-and easy manner beloved the tellers of sensational ston
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.