MODERN SMUGGLERS

Dominion, Volume 18, Issue 150, 21 March 1925, Page 18

MODERN SMUGGLERS

WATCHING THE COASTS

That widespread smuggling goes, on nowadays is undoubted, but individually it is on a‘small scale. The twf great risks which a smuggler has to lake are evading the Customs officers, and then finding a market for. his spoil. It will be realised how difficult the first of these essentials is when 1 explain that there are upwards of 1500 Customs officers—the dreaded “preventives” of the old days—stationed at various points all along the coast, of manning motor boats and other craft which are for ever cruising about and keeping a keen eye on creeks, tributaries, and other lonely spots where ”■ nowadays is undoubted, but individual is thought a secret landing might be possible. ... , . The whole of the English coast is under surveillance excepting only remote parts of Scotland, where—since smuggling wpuld be practically impossible there—no watch is kept. Hie vigilance of the officers never ceases, night nor dav, and it is always up to date. That is to say, the service is manipulated to meet any fresh circumstances which may arise. Smuggling varies according to tlie number of dutiable articles which exist. At present there arc about 2009. Additional duties would tend, of course, to make the service busier; the removal of duties has an opposite effect; and this happened recently in the case of the McKenna duties. Any smuggling on a large scale would be doomed to almost certain detection, as witness the recent case of alleged “gun running.” The officers have. full power of boarding and searching, wlncn they never fail to exercise whenever their suspicions are aroused. Unfortunately for the romance of the subject there are no secret hiding-places in the basements ot lonely inns with sudden descents of armed “preventives,” bloody hand-to-hand encounters, heroic defences, and so on. As my informant of the Customs Service quietly observed. “That sort of thing belongs to the distant past.” The modern smuggler is a prosaic individual, working on strictly business lines, and his would-be captors employ similar methods. Curious cases sometimes occur, lliere was, for instance, the woman who wound a large quantity of lace about her person beneath her garments, and underwent a prolonged period of worry, anxiety and discomfort, only eventually to discover that there was no duty on it. There was also an interesting case of smuggling from the docks. A man was charged with stealing softie. currants, which he had secreted in a linen bag, so constructed as to fit inside his trousets and tie round his waist. An examination of the inside of the bag, however, made it clear that other articles also had been carried away at different times' in the same bag, for distinct traces of sugar, tea, rice, and so on were to be found in'the seams of the fabric. It should be borne in mind that in addition to the preventive officers, both the Docks Police and the Thames Police are also engaged .in/ looking for smugglers. So that should the latter succeed in evading the “preventives” and getting into the Thames, they would still have to run the gauntlet of the other forces. The latest form of smuggling is by air, and the “preventives” have the power to search aeroplanes as well as water craft. The preventive measures employed in this case need not, . however, be very elaborate, since it is obvious that smuggling to any extent could not be carried on in the limited space of an aeroplane. A large percentage of the officers have been in the service for many years, but their numbers have been considerably increased by new recruits.—H. L. Adams, in the “Daily News.”

“POLITE CORRESPONDENCE!” I know, from an allusion to “our sovereign lord George HI” and others to “the vear, of our Lord God one thousand 'seven hundred and ,” to which thrilling days the book refers. The exact date is missing,, for the titlepage is incomplete. I snipped a piece off, many moons since, when I .was a little girl, and in unlawful possession of a pair of scissors. For “The New Art of Polite Correspondence,” with its “Variety of Petitions from Persons in low or middling States of Life,” entranced me then, as now (writes "An Old Maid” in the “Daily Mail”). My favourite was the letter from the little girl at a boarding school to her mother. It begins:— “Honoured Madam,—l am so much affected bv the perusal of your really parental advice, that I can scarcely hold the pen to writ? an answer." I know tin's bv heart. Sallv’s voting man I though silly. Sally was a maid-servant, and he just out of his apprenticeship. He told her: “When I go with vou to Dobney s, or Sadler’s Wells, I am almost like a fool, and altogether unfit for company. I think of vou all day.” I had small respect for one so afflicted, and Sally’s choice I deemed unwise. . . There was great fascination in the epistle from a Beautiful Young Lady with no Fortune refusing a Rich Young Gentleman. “Let me beg,” she implored, “that vou will endeavour . to eradicate a passion, which, if nourished longer, mav prove fatal to us both.” (phe said “Yes” afterwards.

“The most Humble Petition of a Prisoner in Newgate” melted mv heart. He was a Man under Sentence of Transportation, and “being in some small matter of debt for his lodgings, stole one piece of cloth.” I did so hope the “King’s Most Excellent Majesty” granted a pardon. ’ Echoes of tales of the Spanish Main I heard in the rustling pages. There was “a journeyman carpenter, stopped by a press gang and carried on board a'tender in the rivei” . . . but alwavs, from this, I harked back to the lady who said she had “not now any objections against being connected with vou for life.” , ~ I loved her best—best of all my friends in “The New Art of Polite Correspondence” 1