SAAR BASIN

Evening Star, Issue 23383, 28 September 1939, Page 12

SAAR BASIN

GATEWAY OF INVASION MEMORIES OF EARLIER STRUGGLES AREA OF MINES AND FACTORIES For five years I was in Bons—that is a small town in the Saar between Saarhruck and Saarlouis, which became “ Sarlautern ” after the Nazis came to power, writes Frank Puaux, Vice-Con-sul for Franco in Victoria, in the Melbourne ‘ Argus.’ It was before 1933, Saarlouis, tbo birthplace of Michel Ney, Marshal of France, Napoleon’s “ brave des braves.” It is only a small town of perhaps 10,000 inhabitants, but it ranks with Saarbruokeu as the largest centre of the Basin. As it is only about three miles from tbo frontier I do not think it will be producing munitions, Not now. It is not true that the Saar Basin was under French domination. It was French until 1815, but from 1919 to 1935 it was under the administration of the League of Nations, though France retained the coal mines and the Customs dues to recompense her for the damage done to her coal mines in the north of France by the German invaders of 1914-18.

A very sad country, this Saar Basin. A country of very many forests, pine and fir tree. Sad, because everywhere it is blackened by mines and factories. Very largo steel and iron foundries. Saarhrucken is a fine city of 130,000 inhabitants, and many industrial suburbs, such as Burbach ond St. Arnuakl. It was the centre of administration from 1919 to 1935 by a board of commissioners, comprising six different nationalities, including a Frenchman, a German, an Englishman, and a Dune. During that period the French owned something more than the collieries and the Customs. They possessed about 60 per cent, of the financial interest in the industrial of the Saar, the other 40 per cent, being German. . That association of commercial interests worked very well, and there was never any international trouble between French and German workers. For example, I was from 1922 to 1927 chief of the commerce department of the great steel pipe factory of Mannesmann, the German firm whose headquarters are at Dusseldorf. French interests acquired 60 per cent, of the capital, and I had a staff of about 35 Gormans working under me. We got on quite well together—l think that the only trouble innvo years was a minor dispute over wages. FRANCE CANNOT FORGET. It is true that our quarrel to-day is not with the German people, but France cannot forget that the German people always follow their leader. They followed Bismarck and the Kaiser—and now Hitler! That is the bad education of the German people. It is hard to explain. The French people like to live in their own country without worrying what other people do, hut the Germans never look inside their territory, but always out on other people. You may read of names such as Berus and Bisten in your cable messages. They are very little villages, in some cases of only a few farms and perhaps 100 inhabitants. Fraulantem is a kind of sister town to Saarlautern, with big factories and iron foundries, while at ■Volklingen are the blast furnaces owned by the llochling family, 10 or 12 of them. I remember them so well with the flames rising at night from the furnace tops and bathing the countryside in a red glow.

With the French advance into the Saar we have stopped all the work of fabrications. T am sure that we are shelling the Saar foundries and stopping the supply of munitions material to Germany. And do not forget this—that the Saar Basin is one-third of the frontier lino from Luxembourg to the Rhine. France cannot pass over the Rhine into Germany, but the Saar is the natural gateway of invasion, our only common border. From the Maginot Line looking to the right of the Saar—that is, to the south—we could bombard Frankfurt, Mannheim, Ludwigshafen, and Karlsruhe, hut France does not bombard civilian population.

There is no civilian population now in the Saar. All are evacuated into Germany. Metz and Strassburg are completely evacuated, too.