COMMUNICATIONS: The Line Is Busy

Too many people wanted to use the transatlantic telephone. At the London end, two weeks after the service was resumed (TIME, July 2), U.S. and Canadian soldiers piled up a backlog of 1,500 uncompleted calls. Result: in London, social calls to the U.S. were halted temporarily; in the U.S., people trying to call London were advised to try again in two weeks.

Censors observed that soldiers, overcome by emotion, usually wasted the first of their three minutes in hemming & hawing.

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