HAPARANDA.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 12284, 5 April 1918, Page 7

HAPARANDA.

SWEDEN’S BORDER TOWN. Where Smugglers Thrive and Life is Fast. The correspondent of the San Francisco “Chronicle,’’ writing from T'orneo, Russia, supplies the following account of life to-day in Hnparanda, a. Swedish town of which the world in general knew practically nothing until recently, when it became the only centrq through which, for a period, it was possible to secure any reports of what was happening in Russia.:The Torueo River is frozen over again and business is good in smugglers' haven. From far up in the Arctic tundra, of Lapland dtiwn to ice-filled Torneo Bay, thirty miles south of the circle, sledges drawn by reindeer, dogs and ponies are crunching across the river by night, laden to the runners with tea, coffee, rubber and sugar, all bound for Sweden, where they are worth almost their weight in gold. Their sources are Russia and Finland and their immediate destination Haparanda, on the Swedish side of the Torneo River, where former sailors, hotel waiters and typical collection of frontier town typos are making money hand over fist and drinking champagne for breakfast. Haparanda is Swedish, as different from war-distracted and revolutionridden Russian Torneo as if it wore hundreds of miles away, instead of being separated only by a ten-minute sleigh ride, in winter, and a ten-minute ferry trip in summer, across the milewide, salmon-filled river. HAPARANDA SHARES SPOILS. Before the war Haparanda was a tiny village, a frontier Customs post. The Russian frontier gendarmes were vigilant and those who slipped through from Finland with smuggled goods wore few and far between, and there was less incentive to smuggle, ,for Sweden imported freely from across the seas. The war made Torneo tho rival of Archangel and Vladivostok as a port of entry into Russia. Haparanda shared the gain. Business buildings of wood and a large hotel that looks like a typical American small town hall sprang np almost over night. It is still growing. Tlie goose that lays the golden egg, that buys the wine and keeps the poker games going lives over in Finland, which, although short of food itself, permits millions of kroner worth to slip through every month. A year ago a Swedish preacher, on an innocent mission, was shot by a Russian frontier guard. The trouble that resulted led _to almost complete laxity at the frontier, and now. on any dark night, scores of sleighs slip across the river, unmolested, and deposit their cargoes on the Swedish side. Some of the goods go through the Swedish Customhouses. and the duty is paid. Even with the Swedish duty there is tremendous profit on the shipments. BOYS SMUGGLE BERBER, Coffee that-the Finnish agents secure for 10 kroner a kilo (2.20 pounds) brings 20 across the frontier. Small boys, muffled in great overcoats, waddle across the river on skis with rubber tyres for automobiles wrapped around their waists—and rubber is tire most difficult of all commercial products to obtain in Sweden. Its export from Russia is forbidden. The smugglers are the richest, hut Haparanda’s “gay white way’’—the hotel—is filled always with other spenders. There are German agents—tho German Consul always has a party ’ at his table. Haparanda is the spot whore invalid prisoners are exchanged, through the agency of Swedish Red Cross workers, and has for months been the only place where Russia was in free contact with Europe. Hence the Germans. Here is a typical picture of any night in Haparanda when business j s good on the Torneo. The coffee-room is crowded early. A Serbian kappelmeister tunes up his violin. A youim -■uistrian with a bass viol and "three plump._ smiling German girls, with mandolins, _ the rest of the orchestra, play American ragtime. Swedish barmaids hurry about with champagne and other wines—just as expensive. ° HIGH LIFE. "A young Swede with a blank-looking ace, who lias just made ten thousand kroner on a coffee deal, is spending it, buying for everyone who will accept' At a corner table, tipsy but dignified, a group ol Swedish officers stiffly reject such familiarity. At the other tables are Russian officers, in civilian clothes, who have slipped across from prohibition Torneo to make a night of it Finnish smugglers, over for the same purpose, and perhaps a dozen Englishmen, American.* or Frenchmen, just escaped from Russia’s troubles and stopping until the night train for Stockholm, all glad for a breath of gaiety in a neutral town. This is any night—but on “punch days, the three days each mouth when it is_ permitted to sell brandy and other spirits, the line of pledges that cross the Torneo is continuous, and in the bedlam of noise the kappelmeister and his players cannot make themselves heard. So they make it unanimous and .loin the crowd.