'SHANGHAI PITHECANTAROPUS, The responsibility seemed to} lie therefore to some extent on the European post offices and on the Manchoukuo authorities who were reported to be turning back d chinese mails from Manchouli. Perhaps the most reliable account of the position and the most up-to-date was that published in London in_semi-offici form from the British General Post Office:
"The Post Office directs mails for Shanghai via Dairen, which is in Manchoukuo, but the authori:
tes of Manchoukuo will not accept!
malls for, China, proper. throus their territory. They will accept mails for Hongkong (British ter:
Titory) and for Manila (Phil pines), but not for Chinese t Yory, In the elreumstances, m for Shanghai are directed to Vladivostok, and carried on fron there by steamer, Ordinarily here are only three dispatches, a month, from Vladivostok for Shanghai, Usually mails from this country reach Vladivostok, la time to be delivered in Shanghai 32, days after leaving London.
This period cannot be adhered to ig mails should happen to reach Vindivostok just after a steamer has left."
This did not improve matters or: help Shanghai much. The feeling that representations from ithe British Foreign Office might be of service was expressed but far that remedy does not appear to have been effective, if it has indeed been applied. ' Yesterday the latest date of London letters received was, so far jas can be judged, October 25. With another Christmas under the same restrictions immediate-ahead, the deplorable dislocation in 'China's postal connec. tions with Europe is all the more evident. Shanghai may be one lof the leading cities in the world but, in its power of communicating' with Europe, it has been relegated to the backwoods. Correspondence in these columns has testified to the difficulties thus created for the business. Jman at a time when every. encouragement to the development of trade is required. Of private recent|/mails it is not necessary to although this journal in the discussions up North, the|would be reluctant to give the Impression that it refrards even the preservation of intimate family ties as a matter of small importance.
It is not every shanghailander who can philosophically turn adversity to good fnecount, as a reader yesterday leonfessed to doing, by acquiring much merit for uninvited epi les merely iby the device of throwing all the blame for their non-receipt on the dilatory mails. ISeriously, the Chinese Post Office would be strongly supported if could induce its Government to take this issue out of the political arena or, better still, to fuse political address to restore much-needed facilities, The Post Office is believed to desire this result even more than the gen-feral public for, after all, its Fevenue must be suffeting from the present disability. Mor Moreover, inked up with the Siberian mail issue, is the question of the communication between China fand Manchoukuo—money order and other post office busines sides the delivery of letters, Here the Chinese Government
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.