EMPIRE AIR MAILS

Manawatu Standard, Volume LV, Issue 40, 15 January 1935, Page 7

EMPIRE AIR MAILS

AN IMPORTANT DECISION. CHEAP POSTAL RATE. BOND OF EMPIRE. {United Press Association—By Electrio Telegraph.—Copyright.) (British Official Wireless.) Received January 15, 11.20 a.m. RUGBY, Jan. 14. In a speech at Bath, referring to the new Empire mail service and the considerable increase there had been in the past year in the air mails despatched from tiiis country to the Empire, the Postmaster-General (Sir E. Kingsley Wood) said that for a really great Empire scheme two things were essential—a much greater frequency of air mail services and a cheaper flat Empire air postal rate. Faster air communications were also desirable and this involved added provision for flying. In the Government’s Empire scheme they had decided to adopt the important principle of which the British Post Office had lately been the pioneer in inland mails, of sending first-class correspondence by air without extra charge. He hoped, with the co-opera-tion of the Dominions concerned, that in 1937 for the sum of, say, ljd an Imperial correspondent in this country would have his letter transported halfway round the globe within a week instead of the month hitherto taken.

In’embarking upon such project, the Postmaster-General said, he had been fortified by the belief that the reduction of the time taken in the exchange of correspondence and the introduction at the same time of the flat cheap postal rate would cause the traffic to grow to a remunerative level. Above all, the Government had been encouraged to take this historic step forward by the belief that Imperial unity and corporate prosperity were largely dependent upon the freest facilities for rapid intercourse between the nations and peoples of the Empire.