It is worth mentioning here that while the date for the release of the Funafuti Provisionals is usually given as 12 July, Burge's letter, written on the 10th, suggests that the surcharges were, infect, prepared at least two days previously and, in all likelihood, were affixed to the parcels and cancelled on 10 July. In a letter to Alfred Smith and Son's Monthly Circular (cited below), however, Dr. McNaughton states that the 2s. on ld. surcharges were prepared on 11 July.

Communications were usually slow in the Gilbert and Ellice Islands - a situation that was made more difficult in 1916 by wartime conditions - and Burge's letter took a few months to reach Ocean Island. In Eliot's absence (he was in Australia from July 1916 to January 1917), it was Workman who replied:

I regret your action in surcharging stamps. This is only done by sanction of the High Commissioner with the approval of the Secretary of State. What was allure to prevent your collecting the revenue and endorsing the parcels “postage paid”?

Workman noted that the surcharge fees amounted to £1.15.11 and that this sum was to be remitted to the colony's Treasurer. He added:

I assume that all the stamps actually surcharged have been attached to parcels and have gone through the post. lf this be so, I must ask you to forward by return a list of those persons to whom the parcels were addressed.
[Workman to Burge, 18 October 1916, 639/17]

Because the WPHC microfilms do not contain Burge's reply, I am unable to determine whether he provided the list requested by his superior officer.

Up to this point, Dr. McNaughton's name had been mentioned only briefly as the person who had provided Burge with the 2½ d. stamps to be surcharged. It soon became obvious, however, that the medical officer, who had visited Funafuti in July 1916, had played a key role in Burge's decision to surcharge stamps. It was he and his assistant who had brought the parcels to the post office; it was he who had told Burge that in the absence of high value stamps, surcharging was the correct procedure; and it was he who announced to the philatelic press that the surcharges existed.

A keen stamp collector, McNaughton had written to philatelic periodicals in England and Australia to inform them about the Funafuti Provisionals. Their existence was first announced in Alfred Smith and Son's Monthly Circular for 25 October 1916. The editor resorted that “a correspondents” (who was later identified as Dr. McNaughton) had sent him one mint copy of each type, plus the essay mentioned above. McNaughton's letter stated quantities for the 2s. on ld. and 3 s. on 2½ d. stamps that differed slightly from those mentioned in Burge's letter to Eliot. McNaughton also wrote that the mint copies sent to Smith were the only ones in existence, but he was later to announce that there were two mint 3s. on 2½ d. stamps. These discrepancies were to continue over the next several months. McNaughton added:

All were used on parcels except the two I sent you.... No others can be made since no other 2d. [sic] stamps are in the Colony and the rubber stamp... has been destroyed. Today (July 11th) just before the mailbag ready to go, some more parcels arrived, so the District Magistrate... surcharged 8 ld stamps with “2/-” Seven of these were used on parcels sent to natives in T__ [Tonga or Tokelau?] and the eighth one I bought... The other seven stamps are, I fear, lost forever, since a native is very unlikely to keep the stamps.

Two weeks later, the editor of The Philatelic Magazine (a London monthly) reported that he had received a used copy of the 2s on 2½ d. surcharge from Dr. McNaughton. The medical officer's letter was printed in the following edition of the magazine. In it, he stated that “the P.M. surcharged some 2½ d. stamps that he himself had” - an assertion that was clearly at odds with Burge's claim that the stamps “were the property of Dr. McNaughton.”