Second Section
Hongkong Telegraph.
Magazine Features
HOW POST
OFFICE
WORKS
You write a letter to Timbuctoo or to a Hudson Bay trading post in Arctic Canada. You put a piece of coloured paper worth a few cents on it--and it never enters your head that the letter might not arrive.
Through a hundred years British people have learned to trust the Post Office. They'know that, rain, hail or storm, in spite of earthquakes, vol- canic cruptions or—in these' days— submarines and bombing planês, the mail will get through.
Mail lost or delayed in transit is only a fraction of the load that passes from country to country each year.
Hongkong is an isolated spot, re- mote from the great cities of Europe. Yet the local post office handles in an average year something like 1,500,000 bags of mail, from all the world to all the world.
This page shows a few aspects of the elaborate and almost fool-proof procedure that carries your letters safely to Lake Athabasca or Peru.
Handling newspapar
mail at Hongkong Post Offico, Sorters throw the
papers, with amaxing accuracy, into the bags on
the other side of the room.
SATURDAY, OCTOBER 26, 1940..
A
AR SERVICE
WHERE OUTGOING MAIL IS SORTED
Mail from boxes throughout the Colony is emptied onto this table and sorted into countries. the next table it is sorted into smaller divisions. Finally the dispatch section checks over the
* bundles, ties them and bags
AIR MAIL DEPARTMENT IS GROWING Air mail is handled separ
placed in pigeonholes to wa each air line.
Letters are sorted out on a different floor planes. There is a separate table for Imperial has several tables.