World History And Postage Stamps

Northern Advocate, 4 September 1939, Page 10

World History And Postage Stamps

ISpecial to “Northern Advocate.”'] (By H.N.R.). During recent months, events of international importance in Europe have followed one another with a rapidity almost .beyond belief, and these events naturally emerge into the philatelic world. “One of the least important of considerations” probably murmurs the ‘man on the street,’ but that is an entirely erroneous and biassed point of view. As a nation’s historical associations and eras of progress are generally recorded by postal issues, the collection of postage stamps by serious-minded philatelists, with this view in mind, assumes an important factor in the education of young and old. A Piece of Irony. One of the most interesting of stamp-issuing countries to lose its individuality in recent months is Czechoslovakia, after a short stampissuing life of only 21 years. At the time of this country’s first issues of postage stamps in 1918, it was felt even then that the cosmopolitan nature of its population made it one of the powder magazines of Europe.

A well-known philatelic writer of the time referred to Czechoslovakia as “one of the probable spots of future European conflagration.” It is a point of irony that one of the last stamps issued by Czechoslovakia was .a peace emblem to mark the 20th anniversary of Independence, Bearing an allegorical design of a young Czech girl holding an olive branch in one hand and a dove in the other, the stamp was issued just at the time when the Sudetenland situation arose. This Set Always Popular.

The stamps of this country-with-the-lost-identity were always popular with collectors, as they were on a higher plane than most European issues, and most sets were issued with the purpose of advertising the country’s resources or commemorating important historical happenings.

A popular issue was the special mourning set in memory of and bearing the portrait of the creator of Czechoslovakia, President Masaryk, son of a Slovak peasant, who worked hard for the welfare of his country and who was spared from witnessing the ‘passing on’ of the country of his ideals, by dying in the month of September, 1937.

With the present international situation as it is, one wonders just how long it will be before the word ‘finis’ will be written to other European stamp issuing countries, Danzig, for instance.