The Green Forest tribune., 1910-04-22

The spirit Of adventure which brought the men of 1874 to Red River Set tlement willure the hardest on to still more dis tant fields. The scarlet tunic will be seen longer, except in the pages of historical source book; but the work of these silent, steady eyed men will live forever a record of tireless- ness. fearlessness, unflinching courage and pa uence-the making of and great empire
 Change has already come to the mounted. The days when scant 500 men were magistrates, doc tors, coroners, explorers, surveyors, mining corders, crown-timber agents, revenue and toms officers, teegraphers, scouts, riders, drivers, boatmen, canoemen, marines and sailors. dog-dri- vers, mail=carriers couriers. public health and ani mal-quarantine officers. prairie and forest-fire guardians, constables and soldiers for one-third of the British Empire passing with every new mile of railroad. The border "wolfer," the cattle hustler" the whisky trader. the fighting Indian the whole band of swaggering rutfans who used to give zest to life in the 'Territory' has largely passed away, or been crowded northward and westward toward the mining camps of Alas ka and the Yukon. The reckless daring, the bust hardihood and picturesqueness of the force necessarily have somewhat changed in the de- velopment of the thoroughly civilized north west. Now the young fellows getting their breakingin among the settled districts while the old stagers are stationed to the north and west where there is still the frontier" the edge of untraversed wilderness.
 For the purposes of the order of things. 1t is thoroughly competent and efficient force as it was in the days of the Territory. The mem bers must pass physical and mental examination which guarantees that 1 came upon of them in a moment of leisure studying textbook the common law, and he showed examina tion questions which implied that he must know how to conduct cross-examlnation in open court so as to avoid what known in the law as Heading questions" And any lawyer will be i'm pressed when I say that every mounted policeman must know how to take murdered mans dying declaration Such a that if be scented evidence in court. The reason for this is that he combines the functions of a policeman with those of petty magistrate.
 And this arrangement, whereby the same could arrest you and then try you himself and finally put you in prison and be your keeper was ideal arrangement in the days when justice justice of the saddle, and all the more de sirable for being summary. Although there are regular civil courts in the southern portion of Canada now, in the far north the duties of the mounted policeman still varied those of Gilbert and Sullivans Pooh Bah. Primarily he keeps order. After that, he does everything that ought to be done and that 1t isn't any one else's duty to do And when else leaves his duty undone, the mounted policeman takes it up and finishes it. When the mail-carrier, who CTS the North Country on dog sledges reaches the most northern limit of his route, the mounted po lceman takes over the bags, and goes 500 miles farther north with them. Not long ago letter to my hands from the Leffngwell polar petition, Tn Wnlcn the writer stated that ne would take five dogs and companion and travel 300 miles over the ice to mail the letter. When the letter reached it's destination, the envelope bore the stamp of the Royal Northwest Mounted Po lice who evidently had received it at of their posts in the arctic, and then had carried it by dog train from the ice fields to railway connection.
 It is all in the days work to them They will undertake anything, from minding the baby to hanging man, with equal placdity, and put it through without flicking eyelash They have done their part to demonstrate that the thing this earth longer than the equator is the of English justice. Less than three years ago mounted policeman tracked a Yukon mur derer 5000 miles, caught up with him in Mexico, brought him back by way of Jamaica and Halifax avoiding United States soil to pre- vent extradition complications, and hanged him within sight of the of his crime.
 There has never been a lynching in Canada. Put that down the credit of the mounted police, who administered justice so successfully that there was never any temptation for the work to be ta- ken up by private enterprise. There was never any parallel for the experience of Bismarck North Dakota, where it is said the first 24 graves those of men who had died by violence. Toward the Indans the mounted police maintained tra- dition of stern vigilance which prevented anything like the costly Indian wars which the United States waged up to few years ago. There never in the history of Canada train robbery such as still feature the headlines of United States newspapers from time to time The des- perado of every type had healthy respect for the mounted policeman and preferred to conduct his little enterprises south of the border
 Canadians particularly fond of telling the newly arrived American about the troop of Amer can cavalry-a whole troop. mind you-who ten derly escorted band of bad Indians" bent crossing the border to the Canadian boundary line. They met by single mounted police man.