INTERNATIONAL POSTAGE

Greymouth Evening Star, 24 June 1937, Page 7

INTERNATIONAL POSTAGE

D EFICIE NT ST AM PING. Tho Post Office recently gave a public reminder that penny postage is far from universal, its reason being that a large proportion of the mails to countries requiring the international postage rate of 2-ld tor the first, ounce are short-paid. A general survey of the position suggested that the pi flport ion of short-paid letters reached at least one-third of the total, and this has been confirmed by close observation at one of the principal post offices during the period from 7th to 12th June. Owing to the King’s birthday, this return covered only five days, and during that period tho short-paid letters posted for overseas destinations were as follow: —France. 35.5. Germany 22.2, Switzerland 72.7, Denmark 2,3.2, Austria 28, Holland 15.3. Belgulm 40, Sweden 12.5, China 12, !>, Japan 19.1. Every letter to Russia was insuttieierillv stamped. but the corespondenco to Spain and Norway, a very small proportion of the total, carried the full postage required under the international scale, and thus avoided penalising tho recipients to the extent of double tho amount of deficiency.