They knew only too well what this meant! And their hearts sank when they thought of the White Envelope!
It meant, good reader, that there was a most disquieting increase in the vigilance of the censor; it meant that their letters were opened by steam, to throw them off their guard, and to encourage them to write with greater frankness to their absent friends.
Mother and daughter felt the hair rising on their heads when they thought of one of their precious White Envelopes being subjected to a treatment of steam by the censor, and of his exultation on beholding the result.
As the days went by, their dread of him and his evil machinations increased, for hardly a letter reached them that did not betray traces of his handiwork—or unhandiwork, for he was not always judicious in the quantity of glue used by him in reclosing the envelopes. He should have been a little more economical in the use of Government property if he really wished to hoodwink his enemies, and he would have saved Mrs. van Warmelo the trouble of damping the envelopes afterwards where they stuck, on the inside, to the letters.
While the steaming process was being carried on at the General Post Office, no White Envelopes were taken to the censor, but they were posted at Johannesburg by friends, and in this way the distant correspondents were warned of danger, until it became evident that the steam-censorship had been withdrawn and the old reassuring order of things been established once more.
A week or two later another White Envelope from Holland reached Harmony in safety, by which it was known that the secret was still undiscovered, but the fate of the missing envelope remained a mystery to the end, and was a constant reminder and warning to the conspirators to be careful in the use of their priceless secret.
I am sure the Post Office officials had plenty to do during the war, but there is no doubt that their labours were considerably lightened by the "smugglers" who chose to dispense with the services of the censors entirely. And then we must not forget the activities of the spies and of their fellow-workers in town.
Quite a large private postal service was carried on by them, as we all know, and every week, before the entry into Pretoria became so difficult and dangerous, hundreds of letters were carried backwards and forwards, to and from the commandos.
One man in town was in the habit of receiving great batches of these smuggled letters, which he distributed to the various addresses, until one day he was very nearly caught. He had just received a packet of communications "from the front" and had opened it on his writing-table in his quiet study, when the doors were opened unceremoniously and some officials entered with a warrant to search his house. Carpets were taken up, walls were tapped, furniture was overturned and examined, books were removed from their shelves and every cranny inspected with the greatest thoroughness, but the pile of letters lying open on his writing-table, over which they had found him bending when they entered the room, was passed over without so much as a glance.
This may sound a bit unreal, unlikely, but there are similar cases on record, which we know to be true beyond a doubt, and one of these I must relate, because it so closely concerned our friends at Harmony and so very nearly proved to be their undoing. They did not know it at the time, but were told by Mrs. Cloete, after the war, that she had sent all their uncensored, their "smuggled" letters, to her friend at Capetown, Mrs. Koopmans de Wet, with instructions to read and return them to her as soon as possible, which Mrs. Koopmans had done, with the alarming news that her house had been thoroughly searched for documents while the pile of letters was lying open on her writing-table.