The policy in past years of obtaining rented buildings for post offices has proved a serious misfortune to the Department. They are seldom or never suitable for public offices, and the various attempts to adapt them for postal purposes have been expensive and unsuccessful. Every addition means an increase of rent and, with each renewal of the lease, the rental is regularly enhanced. I don't think that it is an exaggeration to say that throughout India the rents paid for Post Office buildings have increased by 50 per cent in the last twenty-five years. In many instances the total value of the house itself has been paid many times over, and the Department still continues to pay an exorbitant price for the privilege of occupying the ruins. No more miserable or extravagant policy than this can be imagined, and in large stations the Post Office is absolutely in the hands of the landlord who can demand what he likes when a lease expires, a position which he is inclined to take full advantage of. In recent years the folly of this system has become more and more apparent, and efforts are now being made to provide Government buildings for all important offices, but any such scheme must necessarily take time since good sites in suitable positions are seldom available and funds are strictly limited. [Illustration: GENERAL POST OFFICE. BOMBAY] 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. CHAPTER XII THE POST OFFICE IN INDIAN STATES