The Southland Times PUBLISHED EVERY MORNING. Luceo Non Uro. TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 11, 1913. AN IMPORTANT PRINCIPLE.

Southland Times, Issue 17267, 11 February 1913, Page 4

The Southland Times PUBLISHED EVERY MORNING. Luceo Non Uro. TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 11, 1913. AN IMPORTANT PRINCIPLE.

The Christchurch Press recently directed the attention of the PostmasterGeneral to the fact that betting cards were being sent through the post, chiefly to youths in shops and offices, by persons who were thereby setting the law at defiance. The Press had evidence before it that though the cards were sometimes posted in unsealed envelopes they escaped detection. The charge was that the Post Office was aiding and abetting an illegal practice- t The Hon. R. H. Rhodes, in noticing the article, states that “the Postmaster - General deprecates in his officers any system of prying or espionage in respect even of open packets, and officers are expected, and are accustomed, only to challenge such breaches of the law as their usual duties, discharged in the usual way make them cognisant of.” Here Mr Rhodes emphasises a principle that has a far greater value than the detection of betting cards or even more objectionable matter. In some Continental countries all mail matter is subjected to a more or less careful scrutiny. A sort of censorship is in force, and letters and packets which are posted are not always delivered, and sometimes those which are delivered are mutilated in trapsit. The principle on which British post offices have been conducted is that which is expressed in the statement made by Mr Rhodes. Under this principle it is recognised that the post office is not a detective agency, that its business is to deliver the letters and packets entrusted to it, and that the more rapidly and privately these letters are carried to their destination the better is the business done. What business people and private correspondents in a British colony are entitled to have

from their post office is a safe and rapid delivery. The idea of a postal censorship, with officers empowered to examine letters and packets, and if necessary to open them on suspicion of a breach of the law, is intolerable to the British mind, and when the post office is used for the purposes of an illegal business other agencies than that of the post office itself must ho relied upon for detection. The post office is within its right in refusing to deliver correspondence to certain persons or firms who are known to be engaged in an illegal or undesirable traffic, but, in general, when the post office receives a letter or packet addressed to a person or firm who is not on the prohibited list the only concern that postal officers have with that letter or packet is to deliver it inviolate as quickly as possible. The suggestion that postal officers should examine letters and packets passing through, their hands, and if their suspicions are aroused expose the contents, is one that Mr Rhodes has done well to reject, and in discouraging all examination, save that which is made ip handling letters in the usual way for sorting Mr Rhodes is acting in accordance with the principle which has made the British post office the best and most satisfactory in the world. As we have already said, it is better that betting cards should pass through the peat office than that anything in the nature of a censorship should be established* under which no correspondence would be secure from impertinent curiosity.