Minister on Rumboat

It is not easy to picture a high official of the Canadian Government riding across the Detroit River in a launch laden with Canadian liquor and a crew of day-to-day rum-runners. Yet such was the picture actually described last week in the Canadian House of Commons at Ottawa by William D. Euler, Canada's Minister of National Revenue. The high official had been himself; the time, lately. His picture was as follows:

Minister Euler in the prow of the rumrunner with the U. S. Customs House ahead: "Do you often cross in the daytime as well as at night?"

Rum-Runner: "Oh, sure!"

Minister Euler: "How is it that the American Customs men don't get you?"

Rum-Runner: "Well, it just happens they aren't there when we get across."

Minister Euler also told the House of Commons that on occasion U. S. Customs agents even assisted rum-runners to unload their cargoes. He said: "No effort, so far as we can see, is made by the U. S. to seize any of these boats. The U. S. customs always are notified by us an hour or two before the boats leave and occasionally we notify them as the boats are leaving. . . . U. S. customs officials have requested the Canadian authorities to discontinue our daily telephone notifications of clearance of liquor-laden vessels and have asked them to mail them weekly notifications instead. . . . There should be more convincing proof that our neighbors are doing all they can to help themselves."

Despite the parallelism of their titles, Canadian Revenue Minister Euler's remarks caused newly appointed U. S. Revenue Commissioner Lucas (see col. I) no concern. The U. S. Commissioner once had charge of domestic prohibition enforcement, but two years ago this duty was taken from him and transferred to a separate agency. What Minister Euler said about liquor smuggling into the U. S. reflected upon another Treasury official, the Commissioner of Customs--a post now vacant through the recent resignation of Ernest W. Camp. With Mr. Camp out of the federal service, there was nobody to take the blame. But these disclosures at Ottawa offered a likely explanation of Mr. Camp's resignation from his not-altogether-pleasant Rum-Runner: "Well, it just happens that they aren't there." office. Mr. Camp was a U. S. delegate to a conference last winter at Ottawa at which the whole question of liquor smuggling was reviewed with the Dominion government. The U. S. requested Canada to deny clearance papers to ships carrying liquor to the U. S. This Canada declined to do, on the ground that it would shift, in part at least, responsibility for U. S. prohibition enforcement to the Dominion government. U. S. Delegate Camp's testimony before the liquor conference at Ottawa went far to confirm Minister Euler's statements of the feebleness of the U. S. Customs service along the Canadian border. Mr. Camp told Canadians: "Temptation is unusually strong and undercover men report the situation is bad beyond expression." null no Washington chief to speak for them, Customs officials at Detroit last week explained that Minister Euler's experience of unhindered smuggling were now "things of the past," that telephone notification of the clearance of rum-run-ners from Canada "meant nothing" because there was no indication where or when a smuggler would attempt to land. The weekly mail reports, they held, serve the purpose of showing how much liquor starts across from Canada, against which is checked the amount seized in the U. S. Meanwhile President Hoover and Secretary Mellon continued their search for a new commissioner of customs whose ability and courage would deprive the Canadian government of the grounds on which to criticize the U. S. Customs service.