My dear Postmaster-General,—I have to thank you for a somewhat cynical memorandum defending official morality on the subject of delayed telegram reply forms.
It does not place the Post Office in a more dignified position. One is naturally prejudiced against any debtor who pleads the Statutes of Limitation to defeat honest claims; and here the debtor is an millionaire department eluding the return of—sixpence.
My view is that these reply forms should be available for at least twelve months, and after that period the money should be given back to the sender of the original message without limit of time. This is common honesty. Your sense of humour will, however, probably be alive to the absurdity of multiplying "checks" devised, like the elaborate machinery on Rob Roy's sporran, to safeguard a "saxpence" or two.
P.S.—Since writing the above a friend has sent me the following note:
20 Hanover Square, London,
April 27th, 1905.
The enclosed reply telegraph form represents sixpence which the Post Office has been battening on for some months, and now I find, owing to an absolutely irrational rule of being only valuable for two months, it has become useless. It is impossible to imagine there can be any honest or sane reason for such a rule—at any rate, one that would appeal to any body of business men. It is almost a worse swindle than the Postal Order, one which you helped to get rid of, for in this the post authorities forfeit the money absolutely. It seems absurd to have two franked telegraph forms. Why should not they simply enclose
