OVERSEA MAIL SERVICE.

Taranaki Daily News, 5 January 1921, Page 7

OVERSEA MAIL SERVICE.

"AS BAD AS IT COULD BE.” PLEA FOR IMMEDIATE ACTION. Strong protests are being made ini the Homeland at the very unsatisfactory oversea mail service now being provided. It is pointed out that while oh spirit and sentiment Britain may be nearer to Australia and New Zealand than it was before the war, for postal and commercial purposes it is now further apart than ever. Similar complaints have been raised in New Zealand and at the recent conference of Chambers of Commerce held in Wellington it was mentioned that in consequence of the faulty mail service trade relations between the Dominion and the Motherland were badly handicapped. This may be one of the causes enabling America to get such a substantial hold on New Zealand trade. IT COULDN’T BE WORSE. A change is very desirable. One of the London papers, devoting itself specially to Dominion interests and aspirations, describes’ the mail service as being “as bad as it could be,” and adds that there are ulo • immediate signs of an improvement. The “British-Australasian” backs up the protests for New Zealand and remarks:—“Before the war we had; a weekly mail to and from Australia, and the mail time between London and Melbourne was thirty or thirty-one days. Now if we can communicate once a fortnight we are very fortunate; it is very difficult to learn in advance when mails may be expected to arrive; and letters are seldom delivered under thirty-five days. The Australian Government, which has a mail contract with the Orient Company is doing its share in serving the public fairly reasonably. The greattest failure is on the part of the British Government, whi?h, before the war, contracted with the P. and O. Company for the other half of the service. Many of the P. and O. steamers have been lost, and the company has not had time to replace them, but that should hardly end the matter, for in Imperial interests it is very important that communications between Britain and Australasia should be frequent and regular, and by arrangements with other Steamers which make the voyage something could surely be done to improve it. LONDON-SUEZ DELAY. “By this time also a little energy and persuasion of the right kind from the British Government should make it possible to save much time on the land carriage of the mails to the nearest convenient poin't in Europe to Port Said. It might cost something, but public money is spent freely on much more questionable benefits than reducing the mail transit between Britain and Australasia by two or three days. Some years hence, no doubt, the mails will travel by air, and once a week or oftener we shall be able to send a letter to Sydney or Wellington in a fortnight. In ’the meantime it would be a boon to know that there was any near prospedt of escaping from the days of postal muddle in which we live, and getting back to anything like the condition of 1914, when already there was general complaint that our mail steamers were too slow in comparison with Atlantic liners, and promises that before long the journey to Australia would soon be shortened by several days,”