MAN'S FRIEND THE WALL

Evening Post, Volume CXVII, Issue 71, 24 March 1934, Page 19

MAN'S FRIEND THE WALL

There is a certain timeliness, a stimulation to reflection, in the recent discovery, of remains of the Manchurian wall that was built to keep out Genghis Khan and his ravaging Mongols. It is a reminder that, after' forty centuries or more, walled structures have been rendered useless as military defences by the modern engines of war, says the "New York Times." ■

Manchuria witnessed the beginning of this obsolescence in the BussoJapanese conflict. In that war those exquisitely designed, scientifically laidout developments of the wall which Vauban originated—self-contained fortresses which had every angle of approach in line of fire—fell one by one before foot and artillery.

Ton years later 17in howitzers shattered eyen, later evolutions—Belgium's line of. fortresses—indicating that a protective device as ancient as Nineveh and Tyre had ceased to be effective. Next, it was not the stones and concrete, of Verdun and Przemysl that stoppe'ct the enemy, but human .gallantry in advanced trenches. Now the" newest great fortifications, along: the .French border,, are the reverse: of1 a; wall: a series of concrete and;'steel tunnelled and ,galleried strongholds'buried underground.. .',. ....... •: './,;, .... ■ ■■■■:. .

This isthe'.pointto which, civilisation has-advanced ; in; seeking^ a barrier against: aggressions/ but.vthe new barrier is >iiritested-by the. era og aviation and gases. At first, a thorn hedge was considered effectiye..' It; had to' be superseded by ridges' of ;v earth and sticks. As methods of attack" improved,

ITS USE AS, A REFUGE HAS GONE

these rose higher and broader. Bubble and earth and tree trunks, then brick and masonry were offered as obstructions.

In 2000 B.C. Nineveh and Babylon had to surround their cities with walls 120_ feet high and 30 feet thick, within which their whole populations along with herds and flocks could assemble when endangered. Nebuchadnezzar more than twenty-five centuries ago brought rams and movable towers and reduced walled Tyre to1 a memory. In the extension of Rome's empire, hills that had a river on one side were chosen for their citadels. At Carcassonne and Toulouse remain the improvements made by Visigoths. Two centuries before those constructions China's Great Wall (300 8.C.), one of the wonders of the world, was raised. More than 17ft thick, and 16ft high, it represents the Asian period when two rows of brick were laid with a filling of earth and rubble between. It had 25,000 built-in watch-towers, and stretched from the Gulf of Peehilli to the Turkestan frontier—or within 600 miles of the length of the United States Atlantic Coast. - '

Hadrian's wall across the- north of Britain, between the Tyne and Solvey, was still more than four centuries in the future. _ It was intended to'turn back turbulent Caledonians from.Boman conquered territory, but no long peace resulted. Its seventy miles of continuous rampart, of sods and clay, with. forts attached, remained 200 years. ; Parts are still visible. Alongside ran a', ditch. From this ditch medieval barons got the idea, of ihe moat. ' ":■"' ;