Page 49 - Life in Langham 1914-1919
P. 49
Langham Post Office
In 1914 the Post Office was the largest single employer in the world, with
a revenue of £32 million.
It was responsible for all the UK mail and parcels, telegraph, telegram
and telephone systems, a savings bank, and provided many other
important roles. It was the main payment agency for the recently
introduced ‘Social Security’ benefits and ‘Separation Allowances’ paid to
the wives of men fighting on the front.
Women took over the role of the postal workers away on military service.
Those women who were bilingual worked on telegraphic and postal
censorship, monitoring correspondence and helping to catch spies.
They helped to control the spread of military intelligence and compile
economic data. Post Offices countrywide were used by the government to
display and distribute recruitment posters and forms and later, in 1917,
to circulate ration books.
Langham Square & Post Office circ 1914
Post Offices were vital to Britain’s Mr. J. A. Pease (Postmaster-General) said whatever the
communications and war effort terms of peace were Germany as a nation must never
throughout the Great War, again be able to organise Central Europe into a machine
to menace the peace of the world. The attitude towards
making the role of post master Germany after the war would depend on the terms of
or sub-postmaster exempt from settlement. A nation debasing itself with frightfulness
war service; it was known as and murder could not be accepted into the comity of
Scheduled, Reserved or nations. Until the Germans had shown a changed
disposition, the atrocities of Germany could never be
Essential Service. forgotten nor sufficiently atoned for. The greatest hope
Sub-postmasters frequently had for a lasting settlement was by an internal revulsion in
another occupation as their only Germany. There must be a real, not an assumed, change
payment was commission on in disposition towards other nations. The terms of peace
were matter for the Allied Governments, but the longer
the transactions and services the war went on so progressively harder would be the
they provided. terms of peace for the German people.
