From the News

Dated:

HUGE CHRISTMAS MAIL FOR CANADIAN BOYS

Splendid Organization Enables Speedy Delivery of Yuletide Messages.

With the British Armies in France, Dec. 23. -- In these last days before Christmas it is a strange procession, indeed, that winds its way on the travel-scarred roads of Northern France to where the greatest armies the world has ever known are locked in a life-and-death struggle.

Vying with the seemingly endless train of motor trucks groaning under capacity weights of powder and other materials of war are numberless other trucks fairly bulging with presents and greetings of the Yuletide.  Oddly enough, both types of trucks are decorated gaily with holly and mistletoe.  It appears now that no soldier, regardless of how humble his station, will be forgotten.

The handling of the vast amount of mail for the British, Canadian, and Australasian troops is fraught with great difficulties, for powder and shell assert their prerogative of preference, and the holiday season will bring no lessening of the gun pressure on any part of the front.  Despite the complex problems connected with the task, the organization behind the British front makes it possible for letters and parcels to reach the men in the front line trenches forty-eight hours after their posting in London.  One reason for this is that the mail is being handled and distributed by "Tommies" who formerly were postal employees.

The Canadians received the bulk of their mail last week, most of the soldiers obeying with childish impatience instructions not to open the parcels until Christmas.  The mail for the Australasian troops necessarily was posted six or seven weeks ago, and naturally there were many casualties in that period, so that the authorities are confronted with a number of parcels which never will reach their intended owners.

A feature of the Christmas army mails is that the outgoing post is almost as heavy as the incoming, with a strange cross-current of money orders going home and coming out.  Some idea of the army postal problems may be gained from the fact that normally the British army sends 1,100,000 letters and post cards and 11,000 parcels daily.  This number is being doubled and trebled during the Christmas rush.  Another interesting fact is that a soldier receives an average of four letters a week and writes one.

The packages being sent from the front contain all manner of souvenirs from the battlefields and trenches.  Letters and parcels for the men on the very front line are sent to them with their rations.  The favorite Christmas card that the "Tommies" are sending home is one on which loving mottoes are woven with vari-colored silk threads.