A far-sighted man who thinks that his business will expand in time will provide for such expansion even as a speculation and, when expansion is a certainty as in the case of the Post Office which doubles its business in ten years, to provide merely for the needs of the moment is the falsest of false economy. The standard rule laid down by Sir Charles Stewart-Wilson with respect to new buildings was that, when a new post office is required, the space necessary for the office at the time should be taken and multiplied by two. Then there would be some hope of the accommodation being sufficient at all events for one official generation. There is hardly a single office built more than twenty years ago which is not now overcrowded and which will not have to be enlarged at considerable expense. If this lesson is taken to heart by the designers of our new post offices, they will earn the gratitude of future generations of postmasters.
The continent of India is divided into territory of two kinds, namely, British India and Indian States. There are 652 States with varying degrees of independence according to the treaties that exist between them and the British Government. Except in three of these, Mysore, Travancore and Cochin, no proper postal system can be said to have existed before the Imperial Post Office of India was established. In Mysore the Anche, a local post, was a very old institution, and its extension to the whole Kingdom was one of the earliest measures of the reign of Chikka Devaraj Wadayar in the year 1672. A similar system known as Anchel has existed for many years in Travancore and Cochin, but its origin is not known. Other States had no Post Offices in the proper sense of the term, and when the Post Office of India was established it extended its operations to many of these without any question. From many of the larger States, however, the Imperial Post Office was rigidly excluded, with the result that there was great difficulty in maintaining any postal communication between them and British India. Gradually certain States began to develop postal organizations of a distinct and independent character with special postage stamps of their own and others had organizations without any postage stamps. All kinds of different arrangements existed and the position is well described by Sir Frederic Hogg, the Director-General, in his Annual Report of 1878-9:
"In some places the delivery of correspondence proceeding from the Imperial Post is effected by an agency independent of this Department, in other places this agency is subject to Imperial Post control; while sometimes again both descriptions of distributing agencies are employed. There exists an arrangement under which the Imperial Post is subsidized for the delivery of correspondence, and there are some localities in Native territory which are destitute of any postal organization, and where letters cannot be delivered at all. Nor is diversity of method the sole difficulty that has to be met. Beyond the limits of this Department information on postal matters can hardly be obtained. Native States issue no Postal Guide, print no lists of post offices and publish no postal matters for the information of the public. Postal information is not available. It is uncertain whether a letter will ever be delivered. Not only is prepayment to destination in many cases impossible, but correspondence is subject on delivery to arbitrary and unknown charges. Registration is often impossible. Postcards don't exist and the inhabitants of Native States, which oppose Imperial Post extensions, are debarred from the benefits of the Money Order, Insurance and Value-Payable systems and other facilities afforded by the Imperial post office to the public. Restrictions of correspondence must be the natural consequence of this diversity of system or absence of system, and the only real remedy lies in the gradual extinction of all post organizations and their supersession by the Imperial Post. Such a measure must entail great expense for several years, but uniformity of postage rates, rules and conditions would result and the cost involved would doubtless ultimately be more than covered by increased revenue."
The first case that came prominently to notice was that of the Patiala State with which there was considerable trouble regarding postal exchanges. A proposal was made in 1880 to extend the Imperial Postal System to the State, but it was not acceptable to the Council of Regency, and after much discussion it was decided to prepare a Convention according to which a mutual exchange of correspondence could be arranged. The Convention was ratified in 1884 and similar ones were made with Gwalior, Jhind and Nabha in 1885 and with Faridkot and Chamba in 1886, the last four constituting with Patiala the group known as the Phulkian States. The Conventions with these States are all similar and to the following effect:—
(1) There shall be a mutual exchange of correspondence, parcels and money orders between the Imperial Post Office and the post offices of the Native State, this exchange including registered, insured and value-payable articles, and being governed by the rules of the Indian Postal Guide, as periodically published.
(2) Certain selected post offices in British India and in the Native States shall be constituted offices of exchange, and these offices shall be the sole media of exchange for insured and value-payable articles and money orders, and shall be entrusted with the duty of preparing the accounts arising from the exchange.
(3) Indian postage stamps and postal stationery overprinted with the name of the Native State shall be supplied by the Government of India on indent at cost price, and shall be used for the purpose of prepaying inland correspondence posted in the State.
(4) The Government of India shall bear the cost of conveying mails over British territory, and the Native State shall bear the cost of conveying mails within the limits of the State.
(5) The Imperial Post Office shall establish no new post offices in Native State territory without the permission of the Durbar, excepting at Railway Stations or within British Cantonments, the Durbar undertaking the establishment of any post offices or letter-boxes required in State territory by the Imperial Post Office.
(6) On foreign correspondence posted in the State, postage shall be prepaid only by means of Imperial postage stamps not bearing the overprint, postage stamps with such overprint not being recognized for the purpose.
(7) Monthly accounts shall be kept of the amounts due to the Imperial Post Office by the Native State and vice versa upon the money order exchange.
No sooner had these Conventions been agreed to than Government began to regret the step that had been taken, and it was then seen that real postal unity in the country could only be effected by the abolition of separate systems in the different States, a policy directly opposed to that which had been adopted towards Gwalior and the Phulkian States. When, therefore, the Dewan or Prime Minister of Mysore asked for a Convention, he was met with a definite refusal, and an alternative proposal was made to the Mysore Government that the Imperial Post Office should undertake the postal service of the State. The proposal was accepted in 1887, and the Mysore Anche was abolished at the end of 1888. This measure of amalgamation, in which the Mysore Darbar rendered substantial assistance, was carried into effect from the beginning of 1889. The facilities afforded by the Indian Post Office, which were thus extended to the whole of Mysore, were fully appreciated by the people and resulted in a great development of postal business, the number of articles delivered having increased in the first year by no less than a million.
The case of Mysore was such a striking example of the benefits arising from the unification of a State Post Office with the Imperial system that Sir Arthur Fanshawe, the Director-General, used every endeavour to extend the policy to other States. The result was that the Kashmir State followed suit in 1894, and shortly afterwards Bamra, Nandgaon and Pudakottah. The efforts to win over Hyderabad, the premier State of India, were not successful. Although negotiations were extended over many years and every inducement was offered, the Nizam steadfastly refused to surrender the management of his own Posts as a separate system.
In 1906 Mr. Stewart-Wilson, who succeeded Sir Arthur Fanshawe as Director-General, started a fresh campaign for the unification of the Post Office all over India, and he succeeded in getting Indore and Bhopal to join in 1908. Since then Jaipur asked for a Convention, but this was refused in accordance with the policy that Conventions were undesirable as only tending to perpetuate the many diversities which Government were anxious to abolish. The position at present is that out of 652 States, 637, including Faridkote which voluntarily abandoned its Convention in 1904, have cast in their lot with the Imperial Post Office, The number of outstanding States is thus fifteen, of which only Hyderabad, Gwalior, Jaipur, Patiala and Travancore are of much importance.
The policy of the Government of India has been clearly laid down in the correspondence dealing with the unification of the Hyderabad Posts with the Imperial Post Office. The Government is unwilling to take over the postal system of any State without the full consent of the Durbar or State Council, but it exercises the right of opening an Imperial post office or placing a letter-box anywhere in a State if Imperial interests require it. As a rule such offices are opened at railway stations or military cantonments, but they may be opened elsewhere in cases of real necessity. The aim of the Government is towards complete unification of the Post Office all over the country. The inconvenience of separate systems is keenly felt, and the inequality of Conventions on mutual terms between a great Empire and a small State is obvious. The principle upon which each country of the Postal Union retains its own postage on foreign correspondence is based on the theory that for every letter sent a letter is received, and that the transit charges are fairly apportioned, and in many cases the difference is slight when spread over a long period. When the principle is applied to a small State in a big country like India, the burden of handling correspondence is very unevenly divided. For every ten miles a letter has to be conveyed within the State, the Post Office of India may have to convey it a thousand miles or more at a cost altogether out of proportion to the postage receipts for half the correspondence handled. The difference is still more marked in the case of parcels and money orders and, despite all efforts to make the division of fees correspond with the work done by each administration, the position has never been satisfactory.
The postal future of the few States that still refuse to join the Imperial system is uncertain. All compromises have been rejected, and the arguments of prestige and prejudice are used to contest those of uniformity and convenience. As matters stand now the inconsistencies of small postal systems within the Indian Empire seem likely to continue until a firm hand on the one part and enlightened opinion on the other combine to abolish them.
Overland trade between Europe and India has existed from the earliest times and was fully developed during the Roman Empire. After the overthrow of the Western Empire by Odoacer in A.D. 476 and during the struggles with the Persians and Saracens the overland trade with the East languished until the consolidation of the Saracenic power at Damascus, Cairo and Bagdad. It was again thrown into disorder by the ascendancy of the Turkish Guard at Bagdad, and did not revive until the thirteenth century, when, as the result of the Crusades, Venice and Genoa became the great emporia for Eastern spices, drugs and silks. The merchandise came by land to the ports of the Levant and the Black Sea, but the capture of Constantinople by the Ottoman Turks in 1483 drove the traffic to Alexandria, which continued to be the mart for Eastern wares until the discovery of the Cape route to India altered the whole conditions of trade.
The first historical attempt to reach England from India by the overland route was made in 1777 when Lord Pigot, Governor of Madras, was placed in confinement by his own Council. Both parties attempted to avoid loss of time in representing their case to the Board of Directors by despatching messengers up the Red Sea and across Egypt. The Council's messenger, Captain Dibdin, managed to land at Tor near the mouth of the Gulf of Suez, to make his way across Egypt and finally to reach his destination. Not so Mr. Eyles Irwin, the messenger of the Governor. He sailed in the brig Adventure, and after many mishaps only succeeded in reaching Cosseir on the Red Sea in July, where he and his companions were detained by the Turks.
In 1778, after the fall of Pondicherry, Warren Hastings was determined that the good news should go home via Suez, and he engaged to send Mr. Greuber by a fast sailing packet to that port with the despatches. The proposal was strenuously opposed by Francis and Wheler, but Hastings, having Barwell on his side and a casting vote in Council, was able to carry out his intention. Mr. Greuber managed to get through by this route, but neither Hastings nor the Board of Directors anticipated the objections which the Ottoman Porte had to any navigation of the Red Sea by the Company's ships. In 1779 the Porte issued a firman putting a stop to all trade between Egypt and India by the way of Suez and decreed that ships from India could proceed only as far as Jeddah. If despatches were to be sent by Suez, the messenger conveying them had to travel from Jeddah by Turkish ship. This was a hopeless arrangement and meant endless delay, besides which the fate of messengers or of any Europeans crossing the desert between Suez and Cairo was very uncertain. The terrible dangers and difficulties of the journey are graphically described in Mrs. Fay's letters. Owing to the opposition of the Turkish Government the overland route was abandoned for some time, but in 1797 an arrangement was made with them and the company's cruiser Panther, under the command of Captain Speak, sailed in that year with despatches. She left Bombay on the 9th March and reached Suez on the 5th May, where she waited for three months for return despatches; but since these did not arrive she returned to Bombay, and, being delayed by contrary winds at Mocha, finally arrived after an absence of thirteen months.
In 1798 the Government carried into execution a project which they had long been contemplating, namely, the establishment of a mail route from India to England by the Persian Gulf and Turkish Arabia. A number of packet boats were put on this service which plied between Bombay and Basrah once a month. Private correspondence was allowed to be sent by this route upon the following conditions:—
1. No letter was to exceed four inches in length, two in breadth, nor to be sealed with wax.
2. All letters were to be sent to the Secretary to Government with a note specifying the name of the writer and with the writer's name under the address, to be signed by the Secretary previous to deposit in the packet, as a warrant of permission.
3. Postage had to be paid upon the delivery of each letter at the rate of 10 rupees for a single letter weighing one-quarter of a rupee, for letters weighing half a rupee 15 rupees, and for letters weighing one rupee 20 rupees.
Two mails were sent by each despatch, one by Bagdad and one by Aleppo. We are not told if many private people were wealthy enough to pay these overwhelming rates of postage or were prepared to face the irksome conditions imposed upon anyone using this route.
In the first quarter of the nineteenth century the East India Company continued to retain a Resident at Busra long after their trade had ceased to be of any consequence. One of his principal duties was in connection with the desert post, by which despatches were forwarded to England from the Bombay Government. Later on the post of Resident was abolished, and in 1833 the desert post was closed, as despatches, when forwarded overland, were sent in the Company's cruisers via Cosseir on the Red Sea and Cairo.
On the 5th November, 1823, a meeting was held in the Town Hall at Calcutta to discuss the feasibility of establishing communication with Great Britain by means of steam navigation via the Mediterranean, Isthmus of Suez and the Red Sea. A premium of £10,000 was offered to the first company or society that would bring out a steam vessel to India and establish the communication between India and England. The first steamer to reach India via the Cape was the Enterprise, commanded by Captain Johnson, in 1826. She was a vessel of five hundred tons burthen with two engines of sixty horse-power each and also built to sail, and she performed the journey in fifty-four days. Her great fault was want of room for coal, a circumstance which nearly led to a disaster on the voyage, as the coal, which had to be packed on top of the boilers, ignited and the fire was extinguished with difficulty. The credit for establishing the Suez route belongs to Lieutenant Thomas Waghorn, of the East India Company's Marine. He was the first to organize direct communication between England and India by means of fast steamers in the Mediterranean and Red Seas. In 1830 the steamer Hugh Lindsay made the first voyage from Bombay to Suez, and Waghorn from that time worked hard at his scheme. He built eight halting places in the desert between Cairo and Suez, provided carriages and placed small steamers on the Nile and the canal of Alexandria, Waghorn's triumph was on the 31st October, 1845, when he bore the mails from Bombay, only thirty days old, into London. This memorable feat settled the question of the superiority of the overland as compared with the old Cape route, but it was not given effect to without great opposition from the shipping companies.
In 1840 the Peninsular and Oriental Steamship Company obtained a charter of incorporation, and one of the conditions was that steam communication with India should be established within two years. This condition was fulfilled by the despatch of the Hindustan to India via the Cape of Good Hope in 1842. The advantages of the route across the isthmus of Suez were, however, too obvious, and the P. and O. Company took up a contract for the conveyance of mails between London and Suez, while vessels of the East India Company's navy conveyed them between Suez and Bombay. The journey from Alexandria to Suez was most uncomfortable for passengers. It was made by canal boat to Cairo, and then by two-wheeled vehicles across the desert to Suez. In 1844 a contract was given for five years to the P. and O. Company to establish a regular mail service in the Indian seas, with a subsidy of £160,000 a year for the combined India and China services. This contract was subsequently extended, and in January, 1853, a fresh contract was concluded with the Company under which fortnightly communication was secured between England, India and China, with a service once in two months between Singapore and Sydney. On the 7th July, 1854, a supplementary contract was entered into for the conveyance of mails between Southampton and Bombay through Alexandria, by which way the transit time was twenty-eight days. The total subsidy under both contracts was £224,300 a year. The sea postage collected by the United Kingdom and India was devoted to the payment of this subsidy, and any deficiency was borne equally by both countries. In 1867 a fresh contract for twelve years was concluded with the Company for a weekly service to and from Bombay and a fortnightly one to and from China and Japan. The annual subsidy was fixed at £400,000, to be increased to £500,000 if such should be necessary, in order to enable the Company to pay 6 per cent dividend upon their capital. This absurd clause was cancelled in 1870, and the annual subsidy was fixed at £450,000.
The Suez Canal was opened in 1869, but owing to difficulties with the British Government it was not used for the passage of the mail steamers until many years later. In 1880 the Southampton route was abolished, and the contract for the weekly service stipulated for a transit time of 17½ days between London and Bombay via Alexandria and Suez. It was not until 1888 that the mails were sent by the Suez Canal instead of by rail across Egypt.
During the term of the contract 1867-1869, the port for reception and despatch of mails was Marseilles. Arrangements were made in the new contract of 1869 for the substitution of Brindisi for Marseilles on the completion of the Mont Cenis Tunnel and railway, and Brindisi remained the European port for the reception and despatch of mails until the outbreak of war in 1914.
On the 1st July, 1898, a new contract was drawn up for a combined Eastern and Australian service. The transit time between London and Bombay was limited to 14½ days and the annual subsidy was fixed at £330,000, of which £245,000 represented the payment for the service between Brindisi, India, Ceylon, the Straits Settlements and China. The last contract was entered into with the Company on the 1st July, 1908, for seven years. The transit time between Brindisi and Bombay was reduced to 11¼ days with an allowance of thirty-six hours in the monsoon, and the total subsidy was fixed at £305,000.
The present contract with the P. and O. Company expires in 1922, and what fate the future has in store for the Suez Canal route we cannot tell. There has been much talk of a through railway from Calais to Karachi, and with the Channel tunnel completed this would mean a railway route from London to India. The cost, however, of transporting the Indian mail, which often consists of more than ten thousand bags, over this enormous distance by rail would probably be prohibitive. Under the International Postal Convention each country traversed would have the right to claim a territorial transit charge, and with fast steamers between Marseilles and Bombay the saving in time might not be so great as has been anticipated.
Another competitor to the steamer service has appeared recently in the form of Aviation. Several proposals for an Air Mail Service between England and India have been made, but the success of long distance transits by air is not yet assured.
It has been stated that the old familiar scenes at Port Said and Aden will soon be as unknown to the Eastern traveller as Table Bay and St. Helena. The old trade routes are to be revived again, no longer with slow and picturesque caravans, but with rushing trains and aeroplanes. Despite these prophecies the P. and O. continue to build new ships, they book passages even a year ahead, and are preparing to tender for a new mail contract. Is this mere contempt, is it optimism, or is it the adoption of Warren Hastings' motto: "Mens aequa in arduis"?
In 1859 the Postmaster-General, United Kingdom, announced that it had been determined to open the homeward-bound mails on board the steamers between Alexandria and Southampton and Alexandria and Marseilles, with a view to effect a partial or complete sorting of the letters and newspapers. He also suggested that the clerks entertained for this service might during the voyage out be employed in sorting the letters and newspapers contained in the mails despatched from England to India. At the same time he inquired whether the Government of India would be willing to bear their proportion of the cost of the scheme. The offer was declined on the ground that English clerks could not sort letters correctly for stations in India, where there were many places with the same name.
In 1860 the Bombay Government reported that on the Europe side of Egypt the former practice of sending an Admiralty Agent with each steamer of the Peninsular and Oriental Company in charge of mails had been abolished, and instead the Company carried a couple of post office clerks to sort the homeward mail. They embarked on the Marseilles boat at Alexandria, and before arriving at Malta they sorted all the letters for transmission via Marseilles. At Malta these clerks were transferred to the vessel for Southampton, and when the steamer reached that port all the heavy mails were sorted. The Bombay Government suggested that a similar arrangement might be adopted east of Suez, the clerks told off for the work being employed in the Bombay post office when they were not engaged on the steamer. The Bombay Government's suggestion was negatived on the ground of expense in view of the unsatisfactory state of the Indian finances at the time.
In 1864 the subject was revived by Lord Lawrence, The Director-General, Mr. Monteath, agreed with the objections formerly urged that English Post Office clerks could not sort letters for all stations in India, but held that they could sort letters received by the Marseilles route only for Bombay and put up in boxes the letters and papers for the several Governments or Administrations in the provinces. It was then decided that sorting to the above limited extent might best be done in London and that, if it were done by a sorting establishment on a steamer west of Suez, the Indian Government might be reasonably called upon for a contribution. Thus the discussion ended for the time and nothing was done.
The subject was revived in 1868, when weekly communication between England and India was established. In the new contract with the Peninsular and Oriental Company provision was made to accommodate a postal sorting office and give free passages to sorters on the vessels east of Suez. The Government of India decided to take advantage of this arrangement and authorized experimental sea-sorting establishments on the scale of six sets of sorters for fifty-two voyages annually in each direction between Bombay and Suez. Each set consisted of a head sorter, a sorter and two packers. The calculation was based on an allowance of fifteen days each way for the voyage to and from Suez, with an interval of from two days to six days between a return from Suez and the next departure from Bombay, Notice was at the same time given for the withdrawal of the Naval Agents employed on board the steamers. One of the principal duties of these Naval Agents appears to have been to report whether penalties for delay should be exacted or not according to the circumstances in which the delays occurred.
In his final report in 1870 on the working of the system, as a result of which the establishment was permanently continued, the Director-General described the work of the sea post office as "embracing the sorting of mails for transmission to the various localities of a huge continent, as well as the checking of the accounts made out in respect of such correspondence by the various European offices from which the mails are received.... It is a work which, in an office on shore, would be distributed among a large establishment, each member of which would have to learn only a small portion of the business; and it is a work the bad performance of which even occasionally will give rise to the most serious consequences." The experimental formation of the sea-sorting office had succeeded so well that the inward overland mail was received at Bombay ready for despatch into the interior, instead of having to be detained there for about six hours, which often involved the loss of a whole day for certain places. The Bombay delivery ticket-holders got their overland letters at the post office window about ten minutes after the mail had arrived, and the delivery to Calcutta ticket-holders of letters, which had been sorted at sea, was similarly expedited.
The Indian sea-sorting office sorted letters for the United Kingdom, but the London General Post Office did not reciprocate by sorting the mail for India, the latter being done at sea, which enabled London to dispense with a large expenditure for Naval Agents. Although the revised contract with the Peninsular and Oriental Company provided for proper sorting accommodation on their vessels eastward of Suez, there was no similar provision westward of Suez; on the contrary, it was specially provided that the master or commander of the vessel should take charge of the mails to the west of Suez. The fact was that the work done by the Indian sea-sorting office on the homeward voyage was so complete and thorough that the British Post Office was able to abolish all its sea-sorting establishments west of Suez.
The steady growth in the work to be done and in the number of men required to cope with it gave rise to many difficulties in connection with the provision of suitable and adequate accommodation on board the steamers, the proper supervision of the staff, and the improvement of the service. The sorting arrangements had to be revised frequently, and the extent of the run, which, as stated above, was originally between Suez and Bombay, had in 1890 to be curtailed to the voyage between Aden and Bombay in consequence of the decision of the Peninsular and Oriental Company to tranship the outward and homeward mails at Aden every alternate week.
With the steady increase in the volume of the mails to be dealt with, it was found necessary to add to this staff considerably from time to time. In 1873 the total staff of the six sets comprising the "Marine Postal Service, Suez and Bombay," was raised to six mail officers, six assistant mail officers, six supernumerary assistant mail officers and twelve packers, i.e. five men for each set. When the journey was curtailed to the Bombay-Aden run the sets were reduced to three, but the number in each set had to be steadily increased until in 1908 it reached twenty-nine, consisting of an assistant mail officer, fifteen sorters and thirteen packers.
In the year 1899 a special inquiry, made in connection with a question asked in Parliament as to the effect of the introduction of Imperial penny postage on work in the sea post office, revealed the fact that the conditions of the service were very exacting on the staff. The extent to which the sorting of the mails could be done at Bombay or in the Railway Mail Service instead of at sea was very fully considered, and, although the Committee of postal officers convened at Bombay to examine the subject did not recommend the discontinuance of the existing arrangement, its retention was made conditional upon the adoption of a number of special measures to reduce the amount of work at sea.
A further inquiry into the conditions of service in the sea post office, instituted in the year 1905 in connection with a representation on the subject made to the Secretary of State for India by the late Mr. Samuel Smith, M.P., again brought into prominence the fact that the work had to be performed in circumstances of a peculiarly trying nature. It also established that, owing to the rapid increase, at the rate of 10 to 12 per cent a year, in the volume of the mails, the question of arranging for the sorting work to be done on shore instead of at sea could not be deferred much longer. This growth was bound to involve further additions to the staff from time to time, while the accommodation which it was possible to secure for the work, especially on board the through mail steamers, was strictly limited.
The subject of abolishing the sea post office altogether, or, at least, of restricting it to very small proportions, was again taken up in 1907, as the Postmaster-General, Bombay, reported that the service could not be placed on a proper footing without the provision of much more accommodation on board the through steamers, and expressed the opinion that the time had come for considering whether it was not possible to have most of the work of sorting done on shore.
By the end of 1908 the volume of the mails had become so large and the difficulty of dealing with them on board so great that a radical change was needed. The question of having the sorting work done on shore was, therefore, fully examined again with the Postmaster-General, Bombay. The position at the time was as follows: The mails for India despatched from the United Kingdom were received by the Aden-Bombay sea post office partly sorted for the various territorial divisions of India, and partly unsorted. The unsorted portion, which amounted to about 40 per cent of the total, consisted of the articles of all classes posted or received in London late on Friday evening, which the London General Post Office did not sort before despatch. The Indian mails from countries other than the United Kingdom were received by the sea post office wholly unsorted. With the exception of trade circulars and price lists, all the unsorted mails received were dealt with by the sea post office between Aden and Bombay. The average number of the unregistered letters, postcards, newspapers, packets of printed papers, and samples which had to be sorted by the sea post office on each voyage from Aden to Bombay was 150,000 and, in addition, some 7000 registered articles had to be specially treated and about 6000 unpaid articles examined and taxed with postage. This work had to be performed under very trying conditions and, during the monsoon season especially, the staff was hard pressed to finish the sorting before the steamer reached Bombay. The accommodation for sorting the mails provided on the through mail steamers was becoming less and less adequate as the volume of the mail increased and no additional space could be obtained.
The proposal to meet the situation by again extending the run of the sea post office to Port Said or Suez had to be negatived owing to the transhipment at Aden on alternate weeks. Moreover, it was undesirable to resort to a measure of this kind, as, quite apart from the large additional expenditure involved in return for insufficient advantages, the difficulty of keeping the staff under close and constant supervision was becoming more pronounced. In fact, this difficulty of exercising proper supervision over the enormous volume of work at sea furnished in itself a very strong argument in favour of having the work of sorting and dealing with these important mails done entirely on shore.
It was estimated that, with the provision of all necessary appliances and conveniences for dealing rapidly with the work on shore, a staff of about 150 well-trained and efficient sorters could do within a period of two and a half hours from the time of the landing of the mails the whole of the work then done by the sea post office. This number could be easily provided from among the sorters already employed in the sea post office, in the Bombay General Post Office, and in sections of the Railway Mail Service working into and out of Bombay. The provision of suitable accommodation for the sorting to be done on shore, which was formerly a matter of much difficulty owing to the want of space in the General Post Office, Bombay, no longer existed as the new General Post Office near the Victoria Terminus, the building of which was then well advanced, had ample room for this purpose.
It was unnecessary to enter into any examination of the question in respect of the outward mails from India as the whole of the work done by the sea post office in connection with those mails could just as easily be performed, without any public or postal inconvenience and at very little extra cost, by the Railway Mail Service and in the various large post offices in India.
In view of the increasingly unfavourable conditions under which the sorting had to be performed at sea and of the greater security and efficiency that would be secured by having it done on shore, it was admitted that the best course would be to abolish the sea sorting service, but to do so gradually in order to avoid any dislocation in the disposal of the foreign mails. The various Indian Chambers of Commerce were consulted in 1911, and the general opinion was that no change should be made until the Alexandra Docks at Bombay were completed. The authorities of the Bombay Port Trust were accordingly requested to provide a sorting hall for the Post Office on the new pier. On the completion of the new mole in the harbour the mail steamer, instead of discharging its mails in the stream, would be able to berth alongside the pier; the delay in transhipment would be greatly reduced, and with a sufficient staff of sorters on the spot the mails would be ready for despatch by the special trains due to leave Bombay within four and a half hours of the signalling of the steamers.
The question was finally settled by the outbreak of the War in 1914. The sailings of the mail steamers became very irregular, accommodation on board could no longer be provided for sorters, and consequently the sorting of both the outward and inward mails had to be performed in the Bombay General Post Office. The sorting of the homeward mail on shore was undertaken from the 15th August, 1914, and the last inward mail sorted on board arrived at Bombay on the 27th August, 1914. In spite of war conditions, the first special train usually started within seven hours of the steamer having been signalled. In these circumstances the sea post office was formally abolished as such, and the Indian share of the Eastern Mail Service subsidy was reduced by a sum of £8800 a year on account of its discontinuance.
No other Postal Administration of the world has ever attempted to undertake the task of sorting the foreign mails while in course of transit by sea on anything like the scale on which this work was done by the Indian Post Office. A certain amount of sorting of mails was done on the steamers of the White Star Line sailing between Liverpool and New York, and on those of the American Line sailing between Southampton and New York, also on board the German steamers sailing between Bremen or Hamburg and New York. The work done on those lines, however, was on a very minor scale and a small staff of four men on the White Star and American Line steamers, and of three on the German steamers was employed. The strength of the staff of the sea post office working between Bombay and Aden was, in 1914, one hundred and three men, divided into three sets of one assistant mail officer, seventeen sorters and fourteen packers each, with seven probationary sorters. The staff was a most extravagant one; the men were not employed for more than half their time. By using a large staff and with proper organisation the work that took five days at sea is now being done more efficiently in a less number of hours in Bombay.
Under present arrangements the mails are hoisted from the steamer direct into the Foreign Mail Sorting Office on the Ballard Pier. There they are opened and sorted for the various parts of India by about one hundred and fifty sorters, and within three hours they are ready for the postal special trains which leave the pier station for Calcutta, Madras, Lucknow and the Punjab. Foreign Mail Service sections work in each of these trains to deal with the final sorting and distribution of the mails to the various stations en route.
The Great War has thrown such strong light on the countries which border on the Persian Gulf that it may be interesting to record the important part which has been played by the Post Office of India in connection with imperial policy in Persia and Mesopotamia.
Owing to political considerations and the necessity of keeping open alternative means of communication between Europe and India, the importance of the Persian Gulf and Mesopotamia as a mail route was established nearly a century and a half ago. The ships of the old Indian Navy carried mail packets from Bombay to Basra, which was the starting-point of a regular dromedary post to Aleppo, linked with a horse post from Aleppo to Constantinople, and it is an interesting piece of history that Lord Nelson's letter to the Bombay Government, giving the news of the naval victory of the Nile, was transmitted by this route.
During the first half of the last century, as the Persian Gulf and the Shat-el-Arab were infested with pirates, these waters were avoided by British trading vessels, so that, when a ship of the Indian Navy was not available to convey mails to Bombay, letters from the Political Residents of the East India Company stationed at Bagdad and Basra were sent to India by the desert route via Damascus and Beyrout and thence through Egypt, and correspondence between Bushire and India had to be diverted through Teheran and Alexandria. In 1862 a regular six-weekly mail service between Bombay and Basra was undertaken by the British India Steam Navigation Company, and about the same time the Euphrates and Tigris Steam Navigation Company agreed to extend the mail service from Basra to Bagdad by running their steamers in connection with the ocean line. The postal system at the coast ports, however, was defective owing to the absence of local post offices for the collection and distribution of mails, but these were gradually established from the year 1864 onwards at Bushire, Muscat, Bandar Abas, Bahrain, Mohammerah, and other places under the protection of British Consular officers, and post offices were opened at Bagdad and Basra in Turkish Arabia in 1868.
Although all these post offices were primarily intended for the benefit of political officers of the Government of India, they have proved just as useful to the consular representatives of other European nations and to the public, and there is no doubt that, by supplying a commercial want, they gave a great impetus to trade in the Persian Gulf region. For years there was no other local postal service worthy of the name, and intercourse with the hinterland was entirely under the control of the British Consular officers. In 1868 Turkish Arabia was wholly dependent for regular communication with the outside world on English enterprise. There were two mail routes from Bagdad, one to Teheran via Kermanshah, a distance of 480 miles, and the other from Bagdad to Damascus, 500 miles, in connection with the British Consulate at the latter place and the route to England via Beyrout. A monthly mail service was also maintained by the Government of India for the convenience of the British Legation at Teheran and the Residency of Bushire, the route lying through Shiraz and Ispahan, where British agencies had been established, but no postage was charged on letters despatched, as the line was kept up purely for political purposes. In addition to this post the Indo-European Telegraph Department had a weekly service from Bushire to Shiraz. These Persian lines were worked partly by runners and partly by horsemen, and continued until the Persian Government inaugurated its own service in 1877 and established a weekly post between Bushire and Teheran.
The Turkish representative at the International Postal Congress held at Berne in 1878 urged that all foreign post offices in the Ottoman dominions should be suppressed, but the demand was rejected as it involved a diplomatic question outside the province of the Congress. In 1881 the Turkish Government established a dromedary post between Bagdad and Damascus in opposition to the English consular overland post and, after repeated representations on the part of the Ottoman Government, the latter was abolished in 1886 after having been in existence for upwards of a hundred years. In the following year the Ottoman Government closed their own line, and the only direct route left open to Europe was the Turkish post via Mosul on the Tigris to Constantinople. When reporting the closing of the British desert post, the British Consul-General at Bagdad asked the Postmaster-General in London to warn the British public not to post anything of value by any route other than the one from London to Bombay and thence by sea to Basra and Bagdad, and the numerous complaints of the loss of parcels, books and letters fully justified his want of confidence in the Ottoman post.
The British post offices at Basra and Bagdad and the service by river steamer between these two ports were subjected to marked hostility on the part of the Turks, notwithstanding the continued efforts of the British Consular officer to limit their functions. Competition with the local Ottoman postal institutions was never aimed at, and Indian post offices were primarily and chiefly maintained for Consular purposes and located in the Consulate buildings. Local traders, however, were not slow to discover the advantage of the safe transit offered by the Indian mail service and the convenience of the parcel post system, but their efforts to avoid payment of Customs dues on articles imported by this means were frustrated at the outset by the British Consul-General of Bagdad, Sir Arnold Kemball, who went so far as to suspend the parcel traffic in the interests of the Turkish Government until the latter could make adequate provision for Custom-House examination and levying of dues on both import and export parcels. After various methods of detecting and dealing with dutiable parcels had been tried for many years, the system of handing over all inward parcels received from the offices of exchange at Bombay, Karachi and Bushire to the Turkish Customs at Bagdad and Basra with copies of the Customs declarations and invoices received was adopted by the Consular post offices, the addressees being required to take delivery at the Customs House on presentation of a delivery order signed by the British-Indian postmaster.
Anyone who has had experience of the vagaries of Turkish Customs House officials can sympathize with people whose goods fell into their hands. The smallest irregularity, however unintentional, detected in a declaration or manifest could only be set right by the liberal distribution of bribes. Woe betide the scrupulous owner or consignee who declined to adopt such methods and decided instead to stand by his rights and carry his complaint to higher authorities. The story is told of a young missionary lady whose wedding outfit was packed into a box which was taken in custody by a Turkish official and was detained for the ostensible purpose of examination of the contents and assessment of duty. The settlement of this knotty point proceeded in a leisurely fashion for weeks, because the owner's conscience or purse would not permit of her speedily clinching the matter by a suitable payment. When the box was finally delivered the addressee found, to her horror, that the wedding dress and other articles of her trousseau bore unmistakable traces of having been worn. To add insult to injury, the Customs authorities threatened to confiscate the goods, saying that there was a prohibition against the importation of "worn clothes"! There is no doubt that they had been freely used by the harem of some Ottoman Customs official, as the curiosity of Turkish ladies regarding the latest European fashions was notorious and could usually overcome official scruples.
When the Inland Insurance system was introduced in India in 1877 it was extended to the post offices in the Persian Gulf and Turkish Arabia. The Insured Parcel Post was used largely by traders at Bagdad, Basra and Bushire for the exportation of specie, and the total value insured in 1882-83 amounted to over twenty-four lakhs of rupees. The pearl merchants at Bahrain, which is the centre of the pearl fisheries in the Gulf, availed themselves largely of the Insured Parcels Post for the export of valuable parcels of pearls. Protests were soon lodged by the British India Steam Navigation Company, which held the mail contract, against this competition on the part of the Post Office on the ground that it infringed their monopoly. They argued that the carriage of specie and pearls was almost the sole source of profit from the Persian Gulf service, and after a careful review of the whole question it was decided in 1885 to abolish insurance of parcels and letters to and from the British post offices in the Gulf and Turkish Arabia. This measure resulted in a heavy loss in postal revenue, but was only fair to a Company which had risked much in maintaining British trade relations with that part of the world, and which has done more than any other to throttle German competition.
The steamship companies employed to carry mails have all along had to contend with serious difficulties at the Gulf ports. The original mail service undertaken by the British India Steam Navigation Company between Bombay and Basra, and by the Euphrates and Tigris Steam Navigation Company between Basra and Bagdad, was a six-weekly one, but a monthly service was arranged in 1866 and a fortnightly service in 1870. From 1878 onwards mails were despatched weekly in both directions, and this has been supplemented in recent years by a fast service in connection with the English mail, the steamers calling only at the principal intermediate ports. There were many obstacles to speedy transit and delivery of mails, such as absence of lights and buoys, want of harbour facilities at the Persian ports, difficulties of navigation in the river Tigris during the dry season, obstruction on the part of the authorities, especially the Turks, and difficulty of obtaining regular labour at the various anchorages. At many places the mail steamers have to anchor far out in the roadstead, and in rough weather there is some risk and delay in landing and embarking mails. The mail contract with the British India Steam Navigation Company required that mails should be exchanged during daylight, and three hours were specified for the purpose; but this condition could not always be observed, and it was in the power of the local postmaster to upset all arrangements. Unrest was a common feature of the political life of these parts, especially when there was a change of Governors, and the authorities were generally too feeble to cope with a rising among the Arab or Persian tribes without the assistance of British bluejackets or Indian troops, who were not always available on the spot. At such times the Indian postmaster used to shut up his office long before darkness set in and barricade himself and his mails in the inner rooms of the building, so that the ship's mail officer arriving at dusk had no easy task in getting access to him. On one occasion the Political Resident of the Persian Gulf, whose word is law in these regions, was a passenger by the mail steamer which arrived at a certain port on a very sultry summer evening. Being anxious that the steamer should sail to Karachi without unnecessary delay, he asked the captain to expedite its departure, and the latter, who had previous experience of the local post office, said that he had his doubts about receiving the mails before morning, but promised to try his best, and went ashore himself. Two hours later a message came to the ship asking for the Political Resident's personal assistance, and there was nothing left for the distinguished official to do but to go to the office himself. He found the captain and his second officer pelting the roof of the post office with stones, while from inside issued forth the vilest abuse of all ships' captains and their relations, with threats to report the attack to the Resident. The matter was eventually settled, and the story is still told by all the natives with great gusto, as the Eastern mind sees a special humour in the setting down of an important official.
The Euphrates and Tigris Steam Navigation Company, owned by Messrs. Lynch Brothers, during the many years of its existence was never able to obtain permission from the Ottoman Government to run more than two steamers between Basra and Bagdad. The distance is five hundred miles, and, as the paddle-boats had occasionally to tie up during the night when the river was low, it is not surprising that the weekly mail service each way had no reputation for regularity. There were several other causes which contributed to misconnection between these boats and the ocean-going mail steamers of the British India Company. The run from Basra to Bagdad and vice versa was usually accomplished in five days, which left only two days at either end for loading and unloading, cleaning and repairs of engines and other duties. If a steamer reached port towards the end of the week, little or no work could be done. Friday is a general holiday among the Turks and Arabs who are Mohammedans, and the Customs House is kept closed; Saturday is the Hebrew Sabbath, when Jews are absent from the wharves; while Sunday is a dies non with the Armenian Christians, who are among the most important of the shippers. It was hard for an European merchant to contend with such an accumulation of sacred days. He was willing to keep open and work on every day of the week, but the susceptibilities of the local population cannot be overridden. The Turkish Government tried every conceivable method of hindering the enterprise of Messrs. Lynch and Company, but their steamers continued to flourish and gain in popularity, whereas the Ottoman line of steamers, established in 1867 under the auspices of the Government with the avowed object of smashing the British line, failed to justify its existence. The Turkish steamers were badly equipped and inefficiently controlled, and being always in a state of dilapidation became a byword of reproach even among the Turkish subjects of Mesopotamia. It was not surprising, therefore, that overtures on the part of this Company to obtain the English contract for the carriage of mails were never seriously considered. Apart from the unreliability of the service, there were strong political grounds for supporting the Company which had done so much under the British flag to open up the commerce of Mesopotamia.
Originally the merchants at the intermediate river ports of Kurnah, Kut and Amara, on the Tigris, were accustomed to post letters on the river mail boats and the clerk on board acted as a sort of travelling postmaster, but it was not long before the Turkish authorities raised objections to this practice as an infringement of their postal rights, notwithstanding that they had a concession of free carriage of Turkish official correspondence through the British Post. After much correspondence and discussion between the Indian Political and Postal authorities it was decided not to allow the mail steamer to be used as a post office. Consequently all letters posted on board were made over to the Ottoman post offices, and this procedure was also followed in respect of local postings in the British post offices at Basra and Bagdad for all places in Turkish Arabia.
The purely Consular status of the Post Office in the Persian Gulf region was shown by the fact that our mail bags for Bagdad were always labelled "H.M.'s Consul-General, Bagdad," and those for Basra directed to "H.M.'s Consul," special seals with the Royal Arms being used. The British Indian postmasters at these places held no written communication with Turkish officials, and the rule was that all such correspondence should pass through the Consul or Consul-General. Service privileged correspondence between Turkish Government departments, if properly franked, was allowed to pass free of postage through our post offices at Bagdad and Basra, and registered letters or packets suspected to contain precious stones, jewellery and other valuables liable to duty were transferred to the local Customs House.
The Indian Post Office in Mesopotamia and the Persian Gulf was not only the handmaiden of British commercial enterprise for many years, but also helped in an unostentatious way to consolidate our position and influence in those regions. Over thirty years ago a Persian Gulf division was formed under the control of an European Superintendent who had to supervise and visit the offices regularly. The postmasters are either Indian Christians, Mohammedans or Hindus, and they are invested by the backward and unenlightened inhabitants of the remote Gulf ports with mysterious powers as the representatives of the great Indian Government. Wild-looking Central Asian traders armed with dagger and pistol, who bring down camel-loads of carpets, dried fruit and other merchandise from the interior of Persia and the Mekran; courtly and picturesque Arab horse-dealers who ship their thoroughbreds to Bombay every year; sleek Persians in their sky-blue tunics; emancipated negro slaves—all trust the postmaster in matters relating to their private business as they would never trust one of their own kind. The arrival of the weekly mail at a Persian Gulf port is like a festival. The precincts of the post office are thronged with a large and motley crowd drawn from all grades of the populace. Letters are delivered on the premises on this day, and everyone who has any link with the outer world is present on the off-chance of getting a communication through the post. The postmaster or his munshi stands at an open window calling out the addresses on the letters, the owners holding up their hands when they hear their names called. Most letters are prefixed with the word "Haji," which denotes that the recipients are good Mohammedans who have made the pilgrimage to the Prophet's tomb at Mecca. The deep, guttural Arabic or the soft Persian response is occasionally broken by a reply in the more familiar Hindustani or Gujrati, for in each Gulf port there is a small colony of Hindu traders from the West coast of India, easily distinguishable by their alert and business-like appearance. Women are conspicuous by their absence—more so, in fact, than in other Eastern countries—but, after the crowd has dispersed, a closely veiled and sheeted figure occasionally glides to the window and in plaintive tones asks for some service, the performance of which she must personally see to in the absence of her lord and master from home.
The Great War completely altered the conditions in Mesopotamia. In consequence of the Turkish Government having ordered the closure of all foreign post offices within their territory, the Indian post offices at Bagdad and Basra were closed under protest on the 1st October, 1914. The sub-postmaster, Basra, continued at work settling the affairs of his office until the 27th October, 1914, and left for India next day, whereas the Postmaster, Bagdad, was made a prisoner on the outbreak of hostilities with Turkey on the 1st November, 1914, and the post office property in his charge fell into the hands of the Turks.
The formal entry into Basra by British troops was made on the 23rd November, 1914, and the postal service was undertaken by the Indian Field Post Office. The service was developed and extended as the troops advanced. A railway was constructed from Basra to Amara and from Kut-el-Amara to Bagdad, and a regular mail service has been introduced by river steamers between Amara and Kut-el-Amara. The transit time of mails between Basra and Bagdad has thus been reduced to two days. Excellent jetties have now been built at Basra, so that much time is saved in loading and unloading mails, and, with well-equipped post offices at all important places, the postal service of Mesopotamia has become quite efficient.
Since the Armistice in 1918 the Indian Field Post Offices have been gradually withdrawn and have been replaced by civil offices under a Civil Director of Postal Services. The occupied territory in Mesopotamia is known as Iraq, and Turkish postage stamps overprinted with the words "Iraq under British Occupation" were introduced in 1918. On the 1st May, 1919, the Military Director of Postal Services was withdrawn and the postal administration of the country handed over to the Civil Director, who is now an official of the Local Government. A few Indian field post offices are still retained for the troops stationed beyond the frontiers of Iraq, but these will be closed as soon as military operations are finished.
The first Civil Director of the Post Office of Iraq was Mr. C. J. E. Clerici, an officer of the Indian Establishment. Almost the whole staff consists of men from the Post Office of India, and will continue to do so until local men have been trained in postal work. Indian inland postage rates were at first charged for correspondence exchanged between India and Iraq, but from the 1st September, 1919, the British Imperial foreign rates of postage were introduced. With the exception of four post offices on the Persian Gulf—namely, Koweit, Abadan, Mohammerah and Ahwaz, which are being administered by Iraq—the other Indian post offices in the Persian Gulf area are still under the control of the Post Office of India.
Such is the history of the establishment of the Indian Post Office in Mesopotamia and the Persian Gulf region. It began with the opening of small offices for the British Consular Agencies and commercial establishments of the East India Company. The public, however, were not slow to take advantage of the means of communication thus provided, and, despite the strenuous opposition of the Ottoman Empire, a really efficient postal system was organized. The extension of the Bagdad Railway, the Euphrates Valley irrigation project and the opening of the Anglo-Persian oil field, whose pipe-line terminates on the Shat-el-Arab, are the three great factors in the development of Mesopotamia. This country already occupies a prominent place in the affairs of the Empire, and, situated, as it is, on a main highway between East and West, it is possible that the region, which was the centre and cradle of the earliest civilization of the world, will recover its old importance. When this has been achieved the Post Office of India will always be able to look back with pride on the pioneer work which it has done in its quiet, unassuming way during the past half century.
Every student of the history of the Indian Mutiny of 1857 knows the part played by the Indian Telegraph Department during that great crisis. The famous telegram of warning which was transmitted to the principal stations in the Punjab by two young signallers of the Delhi office (Messrs. Brendish and Pilkington) upon their own initiative on the morning of the 11th May, 1857, when the Meerut rebels, flushed with success, crossed the bridge of boats over the Jumna and entered the city of Delhi to join hands with their comrades there, is a splendid example of an assumption of responsibility followed by prompt action. Sir Herbert Edwardes refers to the final telegraphic message sent by Brendish to Mr. Montgomery, the Judicial Commissioner at Lahore, in these terms:
"When the mutineers came over from Meerut and were cutting the throats of the Europeans in every part of the Cantonment, a boy, employed in the telegraph office at Delhi, had the presence of mind to send off a message to Lahore to Mr. Montgomery, the Judicial Commissioner, to tell him that the mutineers had arrived and had killed this civilian and that officer, and wound up his message with the significant words 'we're off.' That was the end of the message. Just look at the courage and sense of duty which made that little boy, with shots and cannon all round him, manipulate that message, which, I do not hesitate to say, was the means of the salvation of the Punjab."
In the General Report of the Telegraph Department for the year 1857-58 the Director-General remarked:
"The value of that last service of the Delhi office is best described in the words of Montgomery: 'The electric telegraph has saved India.'"
Excellent work was also done by Post Office officials during the Indian Mutiny, but unfortunately it is forgotten owing to its having received little historical recognition. A perusal of musty records which lie in the archives of the Indian Government reveals a record of duties well performed in the midst of insuperable difficulties and dangers of which the Department may well be proud.
At the time of the Mutiny the British Army in India was deficient in the organization of two branches indispensable to the success of military operations in the field, and it was left to the Post Office to supply the want to a considerable extent. The Intelligence and Transport Departments were in their infancy, and the military authorities were not slow to take advantage of facilities afforded by the Post Office. At the commencement of the outbreak it was evident that postmasters in the affected districts were in a position to keep the authorities accurately informed of the direction in which the rebellion was spreading and to report the movements of the mutineers as long as the postal lines of communication remained intact, especially in the districts where there were no telegraph lines or where the wires had been cut. Many officials—European, Eurasian and Indian—were killed at the outset, post offices being looted and destroyed and mails intercepted on the various lines wherever the rebels were in power. Much valuable information regarding such occurrences was collected and passed on to the authorities by postal employés in remote places. For transport, the Army had ready at hand, on the trunk roads of India, the machinery of the Post Office horse transit and bullock train, which was then in a high state of efficiency, and was able to render incalculable service in connection with the forward movement of troops and munitions of war as well as the despatch down country of wounded officers and men—and of refugees when the campaign was well advanced. After the final Relief of Lucknow by Sir Colin Campbell many of the ladies and children of the garrison were conveyed by this means in safety to Calcutta.