PARCELS AND PAPERS FOR SOLDIERS

Dominion, Volume 35, Issue 7, 3 October 1941, Page 6

PARCELS AND PAPERS FOR SOLDIERS

Delay In Delivery MINISTER EXPLAINS REASONS “The Post Office frequently receives from next-of-kin and other relatives and friends complaints that parcels and newspapers posted to members of the Forces in the Middle East have not reached the addressees,” said the Postmaster-General, 'Mr Webb, yesterday. “The complaints in the main seem to arise from a failure to appieciate that airmail communication is much faster than by surface means. Senders are apt to think that because an airmail letter arrives at its destination in a fortnight, a parcel or a newspaper posted at the same time ought to arrive soon afterward. Actually a parcel may take up to three months on its journey, particularly if a good connexion cannot be made. The shipping position is difficult and dispatches are often infrequent. When transhipments occur en route, some delay to the mails is inevitable." Even after parcels and newspapers arrived at the port of destination some time must elapse before delivery could be effected, said Mr. Webb. The sorting of a large mail took time, particularly as reference had to be made at the Base Post Office to the address cards of the soldiers concerned to ensure that the men were still with the units indicated in the address on their parcels and papers. Then, too, the soldiers might be some miles away from the base, in which case delivery might not be possible for a few more days. Recently some alteration had been made in the system of bagging newspapers, which should reduce some of the delay hitherto occurring on the arrival of the mails in the Middle East because of the precedence given to letters and parcels. In most cases in which inquiries had been made about parcels, it had been found that the complaints of non-delivery had been made before sufficient time had elapsed for the parcels to arrive. Senders should, therefore, not be perturbed by advice from addressees that parcels had not come to hand unless three or four months had elapsed since the date of posting. The Minister urged senders never to include honey in parcels for soldiers in the Middle East. The Base Post Office bad reported that some parcels containing honey had been received with the contents leaking out of the containers even when they had been soldered, and, as a result, considerable damage had been caused to other parcels in the same mail.