One of today's horrors is the risk of others reading the steamy, intimate texts and emails we send to our lovers. But it is a species of risk as old as the hills and 100 years ago this week "Clio" told this alarming story to readers of Melbourne's Punch. The Great War was underway and every Australian with a foreign-sounding, especially a German-sounding name was an object of suspicion.
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"The duties of the censor at the present moment are very arduous, though there are enlivening cases in their desert of duties.
"Several oaths of this kind were provided by a Melbourne girl in writing to her finance. He was absent from Melbourne for three weeks and it is hardly necessary to say that the love-sick maiden corresponded with him regularly. As she had never had any experience of martial censorship, she no doubt regarded an envelope in the post as a sacred confidence between the sender and the receiver.
"She was rudely awakened upon learning from her lover that her affectionate letters came to him with the ominous red stamp on them 'Opened by the censor.' "
"It seems that the young man is a foreigner, whose name was rather freely mentioned in connection with possible suspects. Now the young lady is trying to think of all the endearing "duckies," "darlings," 'liebling" kisses and crosses with which she had decorated the letters to her love. She is also wondering what the horrid soldiers who perused them must have thought of her."
