The incessant border squabbles along the bleak mountainous boundary between independent, isolated Yemen and the British Protectorate of Aden, on the southern tip of Arabia, are, as one British diplomat put it, part of the "burden of empire." Last spring, Aden's British Governor Sir Reginald Champion added another straw to his imperial burden. An Adenese chieftain, the Sharif of Beiham, had asked that a frontier customs post be set up to tap the rich stream of smuggled coffee, skins and qat (an Arabian drug) which kept flowing into his territory over an ancient traders' trail from Yemen. Governor Champion...
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