The Bridgeport evening farmer., 1917-04-11
GIGANTIC TASK PERFORMED BY
 SWISS NATION
Post Office Authorities Me- diatOrs Between Prison
 CTS and Families.
(By Marie Widmer)

since the outbreak of the great war, 1 played the role of mediator between l the prisoners of war and their families l and friends and have thus performed | 8 charitable work of altogether be- 1 wildering proportions. Even the big. | General Post Office in the Swiss capi- | tai was not adequate to carry on this ] task and the spacious gymnaisum of Berne was therefore brought into ser
 vice. Here the trapezes and flying rings were looped to the side walls, along with rows of Indian clubs and l dumb bells, giving a free open space 1 for the enormous influx of prisoners mail.
 A number of regular Swiss Postal clerks, as well as some soldiers, were specially assigned to this work, but the postal department saw itself obliged to engage in addition a large tempor- ary staff whose salaries contribute heavily toward the already over-bur- dened budget.
 The handling of this huge transit involves, however. not only financial sacrifices on the part of the Swiss Postal Department. In view of its in- ternational character it presents mani fold difficulties and problems to the workers. Letters and packages are received which do hot only bear ad- 1 dresses in the generally known for ieign languages, put also in Polish,
 Russian, Turkish, Greek and New
 Sanscrit and all these adresses have first to be deciphered and translated. A Professor the Berne University volunteered at first to attend to this,
 but with the steadily increasing num-
 Der of such missives in Greek and | ny S-I>
 department made it his business to ac-
 quire a sufficient Knowledge of those
 languages in order to understand the
 addresses. Letters of this kind are
 mostly received from and for Cyprus
 where there is a camp for Turkish prisoners of war. Very difficult to de- cipher are the addresses written in
 New Sanscrit on letters from Hindus interned in Turkey and one of the professors of the Berne University is
 kindly attending to this.
 | Mail addressed in the Russian, Po- fish, Hungarian or Italian languages frequently presents some puzzles to the clerks, for in spite of the fact that another one of them is familiar with these and various Slavic languages, it Is hard to understand the cahgraphy
 of the sender and still harder to ascer- tain the exact whereabouts of the re- lcipient-to-be. Letters and packages bearing such incomplete addresses are transmitted to the Red Cross which in turn searches it's lists of prisoners
 of war. It is therefore not surprising
 that such mail matter accumulates occasionally. On November II, 1916,
 the Berne Post Office received from
 Milan 24 sacks of postcards, one to hc n1d al infn fny Austria-Hungary. .'
 In the Christmas rush, which was
 at it's height from November 18th to Ito December 18th, more than one mill lion letters and 1900 mail bags con- ltaining about 10000 small parcels weighing up to two punds were han ldled on one day. 35 men from the postal department and 25 soldiers lwere necessary for the loading and
 unloading of this mail. Long trains of mail vans were constantly at the dor of the gymnaisum and eight Ihorses were occupied all day with Infringing and taking mail from and to the railroad station.
 A very busy section in this impro- tvised post office is the so-called clinic for parcels where the numerous pack ages which arrive in bad condition are wrapped again. During the holiday rush as many as 700 parcels had to Ibe trapped afresh by the night shift
 which generally consisted of postal
 clerk and two packers and as the con- tents of almost every package has
 some peculiar odor of it's own. it re-
 quires a great deal of courage and pa tience to cope with this work.
 Sometimes it is just loaf of bread, | but as rule. the contents consists of a variety of delicatessen, grocery and | dry goods articles and when the wrap pers are torn and verything mixed, Ono | cannot refrain from admirfng those brave men who with a sympathetic or
 humorous smile. as the case may be, set to work to put those manifold Ihome messages in condition fit for
 further transit. Here is a damaged packge with some "Hindenburg'' cf-
 grs intended for a German prisoner l in France and next to it lies a torn package for French soldier held cap
 tive in Germany, with a Joffre pipe
 peeping its head out of the wrapper.
 There a package with small white
 beans has burst open and the packer
 is conscientiously trying to pick them up. | During the holiday season almost all
 the German packages which had to
 be re-wrapped contained a small
 branch of the Christmas tree at home; Useful articles have almost replaced
 the little luxuries which used to be sent in the first period of the world lwar. g 1 Thus the Swiss postal authorities are playing a wonderful part in little Switzerland's gigantic labor of love on behalf of wax sufferers and they are proud to be a mean of maintaining and facilitating between the peoples of 1 the belligerent nations at a time when all international ties are practically severed.