for Women

Auckland Star, Volume LXXIII, Issue 173, 24 July 1942, Page 2

for Women

SHE HEARD HISTORY

VOICES ON THE PHONE

FOREIGN OFFICE EXCHANGE To Miss Edith May Jones, supervisor of the Foreign Office telephone exchange, the world crises of the past 25 years have been "just voices on the line." Voices from Paris and Prague, Rome, Warsaw, Berlin and Berchtesgaden . . . whispering secrets, breathing threats. Urgent voices with news of war, with messages of hope, of invasions, assassinations, abdications, crashing parliaments and of uprising, loud-voiced dictators. "Ever since I joined the post office telephone service in 1913 there has been some excitement," Miss Jones told a Daily Herald (London) reporter at her home in New Maiden, Surrey.

Now she has just retired. Anxious years and the strain of the blitz made her health break down. The King has given her the Imperial Services Medal, inscribed, "For

Faithful Service," and Miss Jones is planning to wear it at a Victory Day party this year, next year?

Reminiscing about the events to which she has "listened in," Miss Jones said, "I was at the House of Commons in August, 1914. In Jubilee Year I was at Scotland Yard, and at the time of the abdication I went to the Foreign Office. Then came Munich, another eventful time on the Foreign Office switchboard — 'Germany on the line all day long.' A year later, war—and a sudden cessation of calls to Berlin. Then one by one British Embassies stopped queueing on the line—Olso, as Quisling handed over Norway to the enemy; Copenhagen, as Denmark was invaded; and then, suddenly one summer morning, The Hague and then Brussels.

"After France fell, the 'traffic' went into a lull," said Miss Jones.

And after the war, Miss Jones Flans "to travel again." "In my job travelled all over Europe, oy means of the telephone," she said.