SPECIAL STAMPS.

Press, Volume LX, Issue 18130, 21 July 1924, Page 10

SPECIAL STAMPS.

ENGLAND'S DISLIKE TO COMMEMORATIVE ISSUES. It may hare needed a new impulse in Government to secure;the issue of a special stamp for the Empire '■' Exhibition, since our Post Office has'never* before looked with great favour on the issue of commemorative stamps for spe-, cial occasions, and it was said that the defender of Mafeking suffered • a little in the view of an august personage by the extireme liberties he took with postage stamps during his defence of ~that place. We have clung with ten-; acity to the idea of a stamp bearing the .portrait of the reigning Sovereign, says a correspondent of the "Manches-i ter Guardian," while other countries have allowed themselves great latitude in the matter of commemorative stamps. Probably our Post Office thought it beneath British dignity to incur any suspicion of imitating the pleasant habit in some parts of the" world of issuing special stamps mainly for sale to'the great array of collectors —an army which Has multiplied enor- - mously since stamp-collecting began to be fashionable, about seventy years ago, and it was discovered that there was a ready sale for. varieties, and subvarieties. In the overseas Empire centenary stamps, Btamps commemorating the introduction.of penny postage into, the colonies, jubilee stamps, and so on, have been very, popular, and America has produced some; fine issues in honour of Columbus and others. It is interesting to remember that, though stamps are comparatively new, special issues are-really only a variant of Ti e i° f tiie most ancient customs in world history. WTiere Bpecial commemorative stamps are issued nowadays the place of the medals which were struck, through centuries of time, to commemorate Events both great and small. One of the most recent in this country was - Queen Victoria's Jubilee : medal, and {be most notorious in history was probablythe German Lusitania medal. But stamb. issues are probably mora profltaWa. r T [