WAR NEWS

Taihape Daily Times, 24 November 1917, Page 6

WAR NEWS

OTJE BRITISH G.P.O. IN WAR TIME.

When his Majesty the King visited the General Post Office he was shown the astonishing machine which stamps with the postmark something like 600 or 700 letters a minute. It is a fascinating operation. A gir stands with a bundle of letters between her hands at the end of a table, presenting them to a piece of machinery which is" moving at so tremendous a speed that you cannot see what it is. As she approaches one end of her ■bundle to this machine, with a suddenness which is like a conjuring trick, you sec the letters flip out of her hands, letter after letter and then give themselves quietly up to another girl on the further side of the table, who secs that none of their stamps has eluded the mark. The sudden flip of those letters, at the fate of 600 or 700 a minute, or, let us say, fen a second, is a most attractive spectacle. The King, greatly interested in ,this machine, inquired if it was a British invention. Regretfully, he was informed that it was not. “What a pity!” ho exclaimed, adding the wish that more of these wonderful inventions were of British origin. “But, sir, we have invented something much greattor than this stamping machine.” “What is that?” asked the King. “The General Post Office.” Kow, it is a fact which no man in the world will gainsay, thaf the General Post Office of Great Britain is the superlative Post Office of the globe. Germany has an admirable Post Office, and Switzerland, too; but Britain is easily first in this matter. With infinitely more letters to handle than any other Post Office, and with *an enormous amount of State work to perform in addition, the G. P. O. is, nevertheless, one of the most unexcited centres of industry you can visit, and by far the quickest and most certain of all postal systems. This is acknowledged. But how many people realise the great attainment of this institution during the war? In London postal service alone 14.000 men have gone into the Army, and 10,000 women, hitherto ignorant of postal work, have been taken on. Imagine the confusion of drilling 10.000 women in -work to which they were unaccustomed. ’And yet there has been no dislocation, no confusion. The postal service has been curtailed like the railway service; but never before has the G.P.O. had to deal with such an enormous volume of business. And this enormous volume of business is handled with all the old efficiency of peace time. That is the point But consider this new business.

. HUGE ARMY MAIL. . For example, no fewer than 32,500 mail bags are despatched every week from the G.P.O. to the Army alone. In one room of that most orderly office as many as 4,000 bags for the Army are despatched every day. These hundreds pf thousands of letters are sorted into their regimental units, and placed in the bag of each particular unit. All this is done in London, The Army has nothing to do but deliver the letters, when each unit receives - its particular bag from IJhe G.P.O. All night and all day, without a break, the letters of Thomas Atkins are sorted into the mulitudinous regiments of the British Army and despatched from London all over the world. I stood in one of these big rooms, over 100 yards long, and watched the women pitching letters info the 4,000 open ..bags, arranged in orderly groups about the floor. There was no noise, no haste, no fuss. But the whole time I stood there letters were dropping from women’s hands into canvas bags, and I suppose, thousands of letters must have been diposed of in this manner during my tour of the room. T was struck by the extraordinary cleanliness of the floor, the brightness of furniture, and the purity of the air. But, most of all, I was struck by the quiet cf the room. These women might have been tossing a few odd letters into waste-paper baskets. As for the stamping machine, it made less noise than a sewing machine. I had the feeling that nothing is characteristically English which is informed t»y fussiness.

It is an impressive, even a memorable sight to stand in one of these huge rooms and watch the women at their work. You see the women who open the mail bags and arrange the primary sorting on what is called the facing-table; then, you see the woman who arrange these sorted letters in order and place them on a moving band which carries them to the other end of a table; here they are picked up by other women, and in bundles presented to a stamping machine, as already described; and, after this, they are taken to various ’tables to bfv sorted gradually down to their final destination. And, while all this sorting proceeds, you notice the smart postwomcn coming in for their piles of letters, and the girl telegraph messengers going backwards and forwards. The men are so few in number that they attract attention.

Again, the G.P.O. attends every week to all Tommy Atkins’ separation allowances, in addition to its usual administration of Old Age Pensions. This has entailed fa new machinery and demands the most exact carefulness. Sir Robert Bruce, the Controller, tells me that he has been much impressed by the really notable way in which all this financial work, requiring the nicest accuracy has been handled by girls. He is also impressed by the way women and girls have performed the general work of the Post Office Ho pointed out to me that with a vast Army in a foreign land, and no charge for postage, the temptation to write home is very great; while parents at home, separated from their sons who are constantly exposed to the very conceivable peril, naturally write to them as often as possible. The consequence is that the Army postal service alone, quite apart from all the other work of the G.P.0., has become a business of colossal proportions. SECRET OF OI7E HIGH PLACE. The G.P.0., of course, is an institution which will flourish of itself, and which is in great measure independent of individuals; but I cannot help thinking that successful handling of its vast business during a' world war war owes at least something to the imperturbable temperament of its Controller, Sir Robert Bruce, who has served under some seventeen PostmastorsGenerals, is the least hurried or excited of men. He finds time to employ in his dealings with the very least of the staff that fine and considerate courtesy which is a part of his spirit. In going round the rooms with him I observed that he never left the humblest of sorters, with whom he had spoken, without bowing to . her and thanking her for the way in which she had answered his questions . I like to think 'that this” spirit is characteristic of England, ’and that those who gird ; ’at tis for being loss noisy and advertising than other nations miss the secret of our high place in the world’s activities. We endeavour to do our business as gentlemen. And it really is not necessary in business to be vulgar and self-assertive In my travels I have never failed to find courtesy and detachment at the head of our greatest British concerns, while for fussiness brusqueness, and pomposity, I have only to go to a Jack in office, or to an industry of the third degree. In another department of this wonderful institution—namely, the Savings Bank, practically the whole business of War Finance is transacted by women.) Here the staff has been increased by 600 temporary women, most of whom had no experience of business, before, and here, too, under Miss Buchanan, there Jg L .an entire absence of turmoil. “They are splendid,” this lady told me “in time's of stress. They never fail to, rise to the occasion And it is truly no exaggeration to say that this vast building is So quiet that you might fancy jlqnrsclf in a school during an examination. In the corridors, I passed 60,000 ledgers on the shelves.