FRONTIER LINED.

Auckland Star, Volume LXIX, Issue 225, 23 September 1938, Page 17

FRONTIER LINED.

WITH NAZI GUARDS.

CURRENCY SMUGGLING.

TREASURY EMBARRASSED.

(Special.—By Air Mall.)

LONDON, September 3

Hitler has mobilised his Xazi Storm Troopers on the western front —to stop currency smuggling across the GermanDuteh border. He has lined the frontier with troopers and doubled the regular frontier police. Thousands of pounds are being spent to stop the flow of big fortunes out of Germany and to end the smuggling which is embarrassing the German Treasury by causing a shortage of marks. Arrested on Own Doorsteps. Hitler's drive has ended the temporary prosperity of small Dutch villages on the border, where smuggling had become a profitable racket. Many Dutch villagers have been arrested almost on their own doorsteps recently and charged with smuggling. Some have been sentenced to terms of imprisonment up to three years. The Dutch Government, surprised to find their own people engaged in smuggling, have asked the German authorities to deal leniently with Dutchmen they have caught. There are dozens of ways in which ntttiks are smuggled out. Zealous;Wackcoaied guards, fired by their instructions, "Don't let a mark leave the country," search cars and trains. Motorists, tired of protesting, watch silently while German officials stripped off tyres and inner tubes in the hunt for contraband money. ' A popular story—among the Dutchtells of a. tug-of-war between & Dutch official and a Storm Trooper over a Dutchman who had come cycling to the frontier from Gronau (Germany). The Dutchman fell from his cycle on to the side of the pavement at Lasser, which is German territory.

A bundle of notes tumbled from his hat into the gutter. A slim, young Storm Trooper and a fat Dutch official made a bound for the man and the money. The Dutchman heaved his countryman into Holland, adroitly kicking the wad of notes to the other side of the road.

At (ilanerbrug (Germany) an Alsatian (log was unleashed and sent bounding into Holland. A storm-trooper tackled the dog, found a roll of .">OOO marks in its collar. The owner, a German, was arrested.

They- are watching carrier pigeons, too. since one was found dead in a field on the German side of the frontier with 3000 marks in a roll on one log and a Dutch registration ring on the other. However, most of the money is going over skilfully hidden in trains.