STEALING “THE POST.”
A NAVY LEAGUE MYSTERY
(Per Press Association.) Christchurch, December 6. For many weeks past the secretaries of the oversea branches of the Navy League have failed to get any acknowledgment of their letters and remittafi'ces to the London headquarters. The Dunedin papers yesterday recorded i the plight of the Otago branch, and it now transpires that the experience of the Canterbury branch is similar. The following letter, received by the Canterbury branch from the Secretary of the Home Office, accompanied by a confidential circular letter, speaks for itself: “I beg to acknowledge your letter of September 12th containing a draft for £25. This is the first communication we have received from your branch since July 25th, and I immediately cabled to you: ‘Draft March never received, trace nautiloid, nor have we received any previous intimation that a draft of £35 had been forwarded in March last.’ The trouble with your communications is, unfortunately, part of an elaborate scheme of stealing the league correspondence by some persons who have had access to it for a period of nearly a year. We could not understand how it was that no communication from New Zealand branches had reached us for nine or ten months, and we are pretty certain now that not a single one of hundreds of letters ' which we have addressed to these branches have ever reached their destination. On making enquiry at the Bank of New Zealand we found that your draft of £35, transmitted in March last, was still uncashed, and I regret to inform you that your case is but one of a great number which includes almost all our overseas branches. The police authorities and Posl Office detectives’ department are doing all in their power to trace the thieves, but all their efforts have, up to the present, been ineffectual. Perhaps you would kindly arrange with the Bank of New Zealand to issue a duplicate draft so as to enable us to recover the amount of £35 transmitted by you through your cheque No. 51,238 of March 21st last. I need hardly express to you my profound regret at j what has occurred, and I am pained ! beyond words to realise the natural I feeling of irritation which must have j been present in the mind of all our correspondents from our apparent neglect. We are doing everything in empower to put tilings right, and 1 sincerely hope that this jumbled state of ,-lff’airs is once and for all brought to an end. Will you kindly explain the circumstances to your committee, and apologise to them on behalf of the president and executive committee and myself for what they must have regarded as unpardonable neglect.”
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Bibliographic details
Stratford Evening Post, Volume XXXIV, Issue 88, 9 December 1912, Page 3
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451STEALING “THE POST.” Stratford Evening Post, Volume XXXIV, Issue 88, 9 December 1912, Page 3
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