reconstruction of certain bus routes has been put in hand and the type of road surface is now more in keeping with present day traffic requirements. Attention has also been given to repairs to secondary roads which had received little attention throughout or since the war period and as a result had completely disintegrated. The strengthening of the military garrison with its attendant equipment and vehicles has taxed the existing lightly constructed roads in the New Territories to their limit and extensive repair work has been necessary. In addition, new roads of strategical importance have been surveyed and planned, and construction has started during the year. The construction of the Lam Tsuen Valley Road, approximately 6 miles long, has been the first major road scheme on which earth moving equipment has been used in the Colony, and once the wet season was over, excellent results were obtained with excavators, bulldozers, tractors and scrapers.
THE POST OFFICE
Postal services are provided through the General Post Office in Victoria, the Central Post Office in Kowloon and seven branch offices of which three are on the Island and four on the mainland. Postal kiosks are operated at Stanley and Aberdeen and special deliveries to Aplichau Island are covered from Aberdeen. There is a small post office on Cheung Chau and special arrangements exist for delivery to Lan Tau Island. There are also special arrangements for delivery and collection of correspondence at Sha Tau Kok and Sai Kung in the New Territories. Thirty shop-keepers in various parts of the colony are licensed as stamp vendors. Owing to the increase in the volume of mails and the development of business and residential areas there is an increasingly urgent need for a new General Post Office and more branch offices.
The year has been one of extreme difficulty as a result of the changing situation in China. All regular air services to China, except Formosa, had ceased by the end of the year and shipping services were very limited. The through train service between Kowloon and Canton was suspended in October and had not been resumed at the end of the year, with the result that only a limited amount of mail could be despatched. Mail for North and Central China was mostly despatched via Tientsin, to which port there were about two sailings weekly, and via Shanghai on the few occasions that there were direct sailings to that port. Owing to the risk involved as the result of the action taken by the Chinese Nationalist Navy against shipping attempting to enter ports held by the Peking Government, it has been necessary to restrict the service to ordinary unregistered letters at senders'
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