In 1916 with the Great War underway and with Australian sweethearts finding themselves at opposite ends of the earth emotional letter-writing flourished. "Clio" of Melbourne's Punch told this bitter-sweet story 100 years ago this week.
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"There is a letter sailing overseas at present [from Melbourne] addressed to a soldier in Egypt, the contents of which are so acid it is devoutly to be hoped that they will not turn the rest of the mail sour.
"A very energetic and self-sacrificing war-worker, who is engaged to a young man doing his bit at the front is feeling distinctly upset, and did not fail to let her fiancee know this through the length and breadth of a voluminous epistle which amounts to a wordy box on the ears.
"The incensed girl, who would do anything to help a soldier heard of a movement in Sydney called The Lonely Soldiers' Correspondence Society, who will send the name and address of a lonely soldier, without family or friends, to anyone willing to correspond with him and, thirsting to cheer a lonely man at the front, wrote for a name.
"Imagine the shock she got on receiving the name and address of her own young man, to whom she had written long and loving letters every mail!
"There must, of course, be some mistake ; but she will not listen to reason, and is firmly convinced that he is carrying on a lively correspondence with dozens of girls as willing to write to lonely soldiers as she is."
