China has an interesting Post Office system. She has not yet joined the Postal Union, and has only partially assimilated Western ways of doing business. The service has been spoken of as “reasonably efficient.” The Post Office serves all the open ports and every important city in the interior. The Chinese Postal Guide, first published in 1900, is for completeness and utility not far behind our own. Postal communication with the outside world is carried on through the agencies of the various Postal Union countries located at the treaty ports. The great volume of the business is, however, conducted through Hong-Kong. “My message from Pong-King was the first that has been despatched from that office in the six years of its existence. This detail may serve as a sufficient description of the country,” wrote a correspondent of the _Daily Telegraph_ in 1907. The Postmaster-General of the Straits Settlements received a petition for the reduction of rates to China. “If the prayer is not granted,” the petition went on, “the results will be that the wife, not receiving information respecting the whereabouts of her husband, will contract a new marriage, and taking her children with her to follow her new lord, leave no one behind to perpetuate that ancestral worship so dear to the heart of every Chinaman. The aged parents, not hearing from their son, will be occasioned to have a thousand anxious thoughts about him, will lose their appetite and die. The sister-in-law who is a widow, and depends upon her brother-in-law for support, will starve through receiving no remittances from him. In this way many Chinese homes will be rendered wretched.” In spite of this heartrending appeal the petition was not granted, and we suppose the melancholy results prophesied followed. Postal officials everywhere are supposed to be heartless, and to regard human beings as simply revenue-producing agents. I have only attempted in this chapter to give to the reader glimpses of the Postal Administrations of a few big countries. To do anything else would require twenty chapters instead of one, and to give a complete account would involve countless statements in figures and comparative estimates. There are annual reports published by most of the Post Offices of the world, and they are very much alike in style and matter. The human touch has to be sought for in other ways and in other documents. Post Office history and economics are interesting to the student, but what interests us all are the men and women inside the Post Office, on both sides of the counter. CHAPTER XVIII THE POST OFFICES OF THE EMPIRE