CENSOR'S PLEA

Auckland Star, Volume LXXIII, Issue 242, 13 October 1942, Page 4

CENSOR'S PLEA

SHORTER LETTERS TO OVERSEAS SOLDIERS A plea for shorter letters to soldiers overseas has been issued by the censorship authorities, who argue that shorter letters not only help the security of the country, but they also have advantages for correspondents.

In making this appeal, the censor says: "There is no intention of cutting down letters of reasonable size, but too many correspondents exert themselves to write at quite unreasonable length." He instances one case of a woman writing to a soldier in the Middle East a letter of 132 pages, including a hair-by-hair description of a permanent wave she was having while writing part of the letter. Three other letters of 100 pages or so are mentioned, two of them by girls who spent a wet afternoon in a competition to see who could write the longest letter. As to the defects of the long letter the censor states that it immediately comes under suspicion of having hidden meanings and is laid aside for special examination, perhaps causing delay in its transmission, as well as causing other letters to miss the post. He feels that, such unduly long letters as he instanced must be as tedious to the soldier as they were to him.

He adds that the appeal is not influenced by any desire to avoid work, but "simply because it is a commonsense request for assistance with the war effort. What the correspondent overseas wants to know mainly is whether his family and his friends are well and happy. That does not need a great deal of writing."