Address reply to" The Secretary, General Post Office,"
132303/12.
quoting Registered No.
274
C. O. 25003
GENERAL POST OFFICE LONDON.
\PFGE 17 AUG 12
16 August 1912.
Sir,
With referen e to your letter of the 10th instant,
No. 24589, concerning the transmission of confidential
correspondence between the Colonial Office and Hong Kong, I am directed by the Postmaster General to acquaint you, for the
information of the Secretary of State for the Colonies, that this Office has received no reports which would suggest that
mails received in this Country by the Siberian route have been
tampered with during transmission.
The irregularity in the arrival of Mails at Hong Kong mentioned in the report of the Postmaster General of the Colony,
of which a copy was enclosed with your letter, may well be due
to changes in the train service; and the attention of the
Russian Post Office has been called to the matter.
In view,
however, of the definite statement in the report that both
Russia and Japan undoubtedly obtain information from the
examination of Mails, the Postmaster General would be glad if
he could be furnished with particulars of the evidence on which
the statement is based.
As the requirement for a special superscription for the
Siberian route has been abolished in the case of Hong Kong,
Japan and China, letters and postcards for those destinations
will
The Under Secretary of State,
COLONIAL OFFICE.