From the News

Dated: January 18, 1917

Nothing connected with this war has caused more pleased surprise to many people in Canada than the astonishingly good mail service they have had with their sons at the front -- not a hitch or a skip anywhere over a period of many months, all letters both ways arriving safely, and all parcels getting there in due course, but not so quickly as the letters.  In Toronto this has been the subject of much admiring comment, especially among those who realize the enormous mail traffic handled -- carried across an ocean in war time and across the Channel, and each letter reaching the soldier it is meant for, one man in a British army of two million on foreign soil.

How are these letters addressed which go astray?  Even though a soldier is in France it is not necessary to address him there.  The first necessity in addressing a letter to a soldier who is in France is to show that the letter is to go to the Canadian Expeditionary Force, and it is best to send it in care of the Army Post Office, London.  By the time the letter reaches that office in London it is necessary for the address to show to which of the four divisions of the Canadian army it is going.  After that the address should show the brigade and the battalions, or the battery.  Not until the letter gets into the hands of the army in the field does the name and number of the soldier begin to have any importance.  Until then the letter is not an individual thing, it is but an atom in a vast bulk of correspondence all flowing in a general direction.  But it must be so addressed that it can get into the right current.

No doubt a lot of trouble as regards correspondence going astray is due to the transfer of men in England from one unit to another so that  the senders of letters here at home do not know what battalion, brigade, and division they are in.  Such letters, no doubt, have to be put aside and treated each as a special one, and the name, number, and whereabouts of the man ascertained by consulting lists, if, and when, such lists have been duly prepared.

The mail service is astonishingly good in the case of letters addressed to a man in his division, brigade, and battalion.  Perhaps something could be done to more quickly inform a man's relatives as to his transfer and future address.