Edward Bennett

“ Yet sub-postmasters do deserve our sympathies. They endure much from an irritable and impatient public. Occasionally, the suffering becomes articulate. “I beg,” says a sub-postmaster, “to report that the man called at the office to-day. I handed him the book, and complied with your instructions. I hope I shall never see him again.” We can almost imagine the painful scene at the counter.
We are often ready enough to complain of the incivility and indifference of the man or woman at the post office, but we don't realise how trying we are to the much-harassed officials. ”

“ The need is evidently felt for a public inquiry agent in every town who will supply local information. Many seaside and inland resorts for visitors have now an officer who is advertised to deal with inquiries; but in hundreds of places the man or woman who seeks information can think of nobody to ask except the postmaster. It is a tribute to the way that the Post Office links itself up with the lives of the people, and nobody but a very churlish postmaster would do other than his best to help his correspondents. ”

“ Perhaps the chief differences that an Englishman notes in several European countries are the more leisurely ways of the official: this individual does not understand the necessity for speeding up, and he looks upon the man who is in a hurry as simply a mad Englishman. The leading features of our own postal system are to be found in most countries: the postal service, the telegraph, and the telephone are usually linked together, and the difference is the human factor. ”

“ Yet so long does it take to root out an old association of ideas in the mind of the British public, that a postmaster is still regarded in the minds of many people as merely a man who sells stamps and perhaps fancy articles. ”

“ The real centre of the world for us is the village post office. It does everything except the one thing which is supposed to be the duty of a post office—distribute the letters. That is done from a neighbouring village by a five-mile-an-hour-easy postman, who when he has delivered our letters and returned to his own office a mile and a half away has still a thirteen-mile tramp amongst the scattered farms. ”

“ THE TELEPHONE If there was one thing more than another which must have seemed to our forefathers essential to conversation it was the presence of two or more individuals within what we call speaking distance of one another. Even in the cases where men have believed themselves to be in communication with the unseen world, the spirit with whom they held intercourse has been with them or near them. The one thing of which they could never have dreamed was, that in London you could talk rationally to a friend in Paris on the price of Consols or the state of the weather. ”

“ OF THE POST OFFICE The General Post Office undertakes several duties for the State that are not strictly proper to the Department, but which fall to its share because of the splendid machinery it possesses for getting into touch with the people. And when big reforms come along, such as Old Age Pensions or National Insurance, although the money is to come out of imperial funds, and is not brought into the Post Office balance-sheet at all, it seems the most natural thing for the Treasury to use as paymaster or receiving agent the Department which has an office in every village. ”

“ There is, I am afraid, very often a great deal of truth in the charges that are often brought against postal counter clerks, especially female clerks, for incivility. I am not defending them—I have suffered myself; but a great deal too much is made of single instances, and I am convinced that in the vast majority of cases the charge does not apply. There are four classes of public servants who have my special sympathy: policemen, railway officials at big passenger stations, omnibus conductors, and Post Office counter clerks. They are all answering foolish questions the whole day long. ”

“ We are approaching the end of our story, and it may not be out of place in this last chapter to say a few words concerning the Post Office as a whole, worked not by machinery but by human beings. Now what is called “the system” in human concerns influences more or less every individual. If you are a grocer “the system” is with you; the custom, the habit, and the public opinion of your trade will grow upon you, and your individuality and personal enterprise may in the end be crushed by “the system.” ”

“ A Head Postmaster is not allowed to interest himself in any business, such as banking, insurance, or parcels delivery, which would bring him into competition with his own Department. Unlike the centre of sweet reasonableness at the vicarage, he is compelled to be absolutely neutral at election times, and the postmaster is expected at all times to be discreet and guarded in the expression of his political views. Sometimes, therefore, it happens that the centre of sweet reasonableness is really at the post office and not at the vicarage. ”

“ And if, in addition to the men, there could also pass through the streets of London the various means by which the mails are carried to their destination, what an object-lesson it would be in the activities of the Post Office! In this country the horse, the motor van, and the railway train are the usual bearers of his Majesty's mails—in addition, of course, to the ubiquitous postman. But the letter-carriers from other parts of the Empire would include the dog from British Columbia, the elephant from India, the camel from the Cape, and the pigeon from New Zealand. ”

“ Officers and men alike were always alert in the discharge of their duties, and their courtesy was unfailing. No trouble was ever too great for them to take: their sole concern was that those longed-for letters from home might reach the expectant owners as quickly as possible. At Modder River the post office was a miserable room in which you could not have swung your arm, much less your arm and a cat, but in that wretched apartment the heroes of the Postal Corps kept cheerfully to their work with unflagging zeal. ”

“ And good work is always appreciated by his chiefs and by the public. In these commercial days we define the word “appreciation” only in terms of £ s. d.; we are in danger of losing the full meaning of the word. The fact is, every decent man craves for appreciation by his fellows; it is the noblest thing about him; and a man who professes to be superior to this craving, and demands only payment in hard cash, has the experience of centuries against him. For this reason the esprit de corps of the Post Office service is most marked. ”

“ KING EDWARD'S BUILDING In every big town the post office is now one of the most important, while in some cases it is the most imposing of all the local public buildings. Here the head postmaster is to be found, and here all the post office business of the district is administered. People have often asked me, “Who is the postmaster of London?” They understand that the Postmaster-General and the Secretary have their offices at St. Martin's le Grand, but it is evident that these gentlemen are the supreme heads of the whole Post Office system, and are not specially concerned with London. ”

“ It is certainly a tradition of English country life to look to the clergyman of a parish to take the lead in many local matters, especially in those of a philanthropic character. But there is also in every village and town another State official who in consequence of the varied nature of his duties is the guide and counsellor of the public in a number of their temporal concerns, and who is by virtue of his office appealed to constantly on matters which lie far outside his official labours. ”

“ The Civil Service is not a field which provides scope for a variety of different characters and temperaments. Forty-nine out of fifty posts are of a more or less routine character, and the men who succeed are often those whose minds move with ease in a groove, or they are men who, by long practice and severe discipline, have trained their minds to act with the finish and regularity of a machine. Some of the most successful men in the lower branches of the Service, when promoted to positions where some initiative and diplomacy are required, are obvious failures. ”

“ Stop the supplies and every post office in the country will feel the effect very quickly. Nothing is too small or insignificant to be supplied by the Stores. If a department wants a packet of pins it applies to the Stores: if it requires a safe or a telegraph pole the Stores will supply the article. If an official requires a uniform the Stores will fit him as well as a West End tailor. The business done is colossal; the figures of the Stores Department are in some respects the most interesting in the Post Office. ”

“ Like Naaman, they prefer to be asked to do some great thing. For one reason, both their chiefs and the public will give them more credit for solving an apparently hopeless puzzle than for suggesting a way out of an easy difficulty. They may have in the one case a paragraph all to themselves in the Daily Mail: in the other case they will not even be thanked by the man who receives the letter, and who is not modest enough to be surprised because he is known to the Post Office in spite of an imperfect address. ”

“ It is a melancholy fact that a large number of the public cannot be trusted to send a parcel honestly, that a still larger number cannot be relied on to address one correctly, and that a yet larger number cannot pack a parcel. If the faults of the public in these respects could be remedied to any great extent, the force at Mount Pleasant could be reduced considerably, and there would be a substantial gain to the revenue. ”

“ The sub-postmaster, on the other hand, has, as it were, a foot in both worlds, the commercial and the official, and he comes to his duties with the training not of the Civil Servant but of the local tradesman. I sometimes think that it is a good thing for the Post Office service that so many of its servants should have this double interest; they are in close touch with the public, they know its peculiarities across the counter, and they are less likely to be strangled by red tape. ”

“ Have I not made out my case, that the Post Office Guide is almost as interesting as Bradshaw? At any rate there is no doubt that, from the point of view of the long-suffering official, the British public are in need of a Postal Guide. I am quite sure that in the eyes of the average counter clerk the British public is the most over-rated institution in the country. There seems at times no limit to its wrongheadedness and obtuseness on postal matters. ”

“ The coarse-grained hand, which seems all thumb and knuckle and no nail, and which takes up money or puts it down with such an odd, clumsy, lumbering touch: the retail trader's hand, which clinks it up and tosses it over with a bounce: the housewife's hand, which has a lingering propensity to keep some of it back, and to drive a bargain by not paying in the last shilling or so of the sum for which her Order is obtained: the quick, the slow, the coarse, the fine, the sensitive and dull, the ready and unready—they are always at the grating all day long. ”

“ There is a delightful official phrase which is frequently addressed to complainants, and it runs something like this: “The regulation, which is framed under Act of Parliament, has been drawn up as much in the interests of the public as to safeguard the Department.” Both the public and the Department need to be protected from the capriciousness of the average official—who is also, it may be noted, the average man. ”

“ Hundreds of haycarts make their way to London during the night-time along some of the Essex roads. The drivers of these carts work very long hours and often fall asleep. The horses sometimes stop and go to sleep also. These carts standing in the centre of the highway are often a source of danger to the motor mail vans, and we can imagine the feelings of a driver of one of the carts when awakened from a long sleep by the hoot of the motor, and perhaps realising that he is miles farther from his destination than he should be. ”

“ And, of course, in hundreds of cases the charge of personal ineffectiveness is ludicrously false. The opportunities of their calling for brave and effective action in the streets and wayside roads on behalf of their fellow-creatures are constantly being taken advantage of by postmen, and the Royal Humane Society's medals are held by quite a number of these men. And Post Office history is full of stories of the way they stood by the mail to the last moment in crises of difficulty and danger. ”

“ The sailing vessel, beautiful to look at and with her capacity to carry his Majesty's mails speedily and punctually depending largely on a fair wind and freedom from capture by his Majesty's enemies, is a more inspiring subject for the writer than the crossing of the Atlantic within five days of the Mauretania in spite of wind and weather. Neither poetry nor art has found much inspiration in mere speed. It is only a prosaic ideal of the modern Post Office.
In a previous chapter I have stated that the Dover Road is probably the oldest mail route in the kingdom. ”