FRONTIER TROUBLES.

Patea Mail, Volume XLIV, 24 November 1920, Page 3

FRONTIER TROUBLES.

SOURCE OF INTERNATIONAL INCIDENTS. Freeh Customs guards have shot dead two Belgian smugglers who were running a car loaded with tobacco across the frontier near Bailleul, and there has been a regular battle between guards and smugglers at Valenciennes. It is the same old story, says the Daily '.Mail correspondent. A purely artificial frontier which has to be guarded night and day, and so absorbs the services of thousands of ablebodied men who might be much better and more usefully employed. We, as a nation, are not half as grateful as we should be that our insular position enables us to dispense with all (he endless worries entailed by a frontier of this description. Such a frontier has to be carefully marked and constantly guarded. AVhen the boundary is a river that, at any rale, forms a distinct line of demarcation, but when it is merely a road, sentries are stationed at all crossroads and all main roads or lines of railway, which cut across the frontier, aie guarded by Custom houses —one on each side of the line. All vehicles are stopped and all foot passengers searched. When, as often happens, the frontier runs through a forest, a broad belt is cleared of trees and undergrowth, and along the centre of the clearing stones arc set up at intervals to mark the boundary. These clearings have to be guarded even more carefully than the open country, for otherwise every dark night will sec smugglers dashing across laden with dutiable goods.

The old frontier line between France and Germany was the .most jealouslyguarded in the world, and the scene of constantly recurring "incidents" which kept, bad blood alne.

Once a French officer, riding hard in chase of a stag, galloped across the frontier and was shot dead by a German guard, and on another occasion a French chief of police was dragged across by German spies disguised as peasants, and .imprisoned in Metz. The Empire's most difficult frontier is that separating Canada from the United States. From Lake of the Woods, beyond the Great Lakes, the line runs through hundreds of miles of prairie, mountain, and forest to the Pacific. The line is marked by iron pillars placed a mile apart as far as the Red River, -and beyond that by mounds of earth and stone cairns.

Along the southern borders of Alberta the frontier crosses vast prairies and here savage disputes were constantly arising over cattle which strayed across the boundary line and were seized by Customs House officers. The trouble grew so acute that at last the two Governments combined and built a boundary fence of barbed wire 700 miles long.