Th , : Post Office ought never to forget, while performing its
more tedious duties, that, alone among Government Depart- ments, it may proudly claim to be the Ministry of Romance. I-ate4 the Postmaster-General has requested us—without, as Pet, commanding us—to write our names and addresses on the outside of letters we send even in England. It is to be hoped that those among us who are innocent of all guile will not too dutifully comply. Because we and the P.M.G. are no longer involved in courtship of the Ogre's Most Beautiful Daughter, there is no good reason for our forgetting or em- barrassing those fortunate ones who are. If we all write our dull names on the backs of our envelopes, the Ogre will pounce upon any letter from which a sender's name is conspicuously absent. If the P.M.G. had had his way, Romeo would never have attained Juliet, and none of Boccaccio's nightingales would have sung. It is easy to laugh the problem away. but the Post Office's proposal is, seriously, to be resisted. Let us not sacrifice our small liberties too easily with the great that must be sacrificed. The privacy of the post is worth fighting for, subject to the genuine necessities of censorship, and it is to be presumed that Juliet would greatly prefer to submit her secrets to an anonymous censor than to advertise Romeo's name to her own growling Capulets.
* * * *
Previous page
