THE FORTS OF FRANCE

Hokitika Guardian, 31 August 1931, Page 3

THE FORTS OF FRANCE

GIRDLE OF STEEL. GUNS MASKED BY LAWNS AND GARDENS. PARIS, June 30. If France should ever again be attacked (from the east, Hostile armies would not be checked by massive citadels with . towering battlements, but by a long -stretch- of innocent-fooking grass . lawns and lovely flower gardens. Such green swards and beauty spots are now being laid out along the whole eastern frontier from the Swiss border to the Rhine, a distance of approximately 250 miles.

The moment an eventual hostile force would venture within sight of the frontier these gardens would suddenly change their tranquil aspect to unfold themselves into sinister crouching monsters blazing death and destruction. Arrfiour-plated turrets like those on the foredeck of a modern dreadnought would spiral .upward from the midst of the begonia beds to send withering salvoes of fire.into advancing columns of infantry. Machine guns would bob from ; .the. ground in the most unexpected places, here from a clump of shrubbery; or from the centre of a pond, there from behind a cosy ornaipental bench. Everywhere the earth would open to release torrents of steel and fire.

NEARING COMPLETION: , . i: ■ . Hundreds of the new invisible forts along the eastern frontier are nearing completion.. Before another two years are up a solid impassable chain of cement and, metal, 200 odd miles long, masked from the untrained eye by elaborate landscape gardening, will en- , circle France, . Only when that girdle of life and death is. firmly established and ready to function will France feel herself sufficiently secure to consider in earnest various land disarmament proposals. Military chiefs agree that the new defence system can be held with fewer than ten divisions, or 200,000 men, but every one of these must be a trained mechanical export. The new defence line now reaching the last stage of construction practically follows the frontier. The distaiice beteen the outer girdle of invisible forts and the border nowhere exceeds ten inilis. T his ... would se-m to indicate that battler is to be given immediately an aggressive force crosses the line, and that unlike 1914, wh n the French armies fell back upon ,Belfort, Metz and Verdun, not an inch of territory is to be sacrificed without a - terrible struggle. The outer defence liiie, as it appears to-day, consists of a mass of cement pill boxes about a mile or in some places two miles apart. They .are bur-r-red deep in the ground. On the surface nothing is visible but a small turret, not unlike the ’cdiinin'g tow W-of 3»* 'submarine. There is room for only four or at t-h« utmost half a dozen men in -this turret.- The whole pill-box is to contain a ' garrison of twelve men, all -expert machine gunners fully familiar with every detail of the terrain-*.- over which theii' fire is- to be projected.

1 • *'SucK' a miniature "fort 'is of two : storey. The upper storey is a reversible turret of -steel furnished with narrow slits through which the mouths of the machine guns point. Twenty or thirty yards underground, ' depending upon the soil formation arid other circumstances, is the second storey, serving as a reserve depot. This is the dug-out replacing the muddy hole of the last war. It is - a relatively - comfortable chamber, "ten by twelve yards, furnished with camp beds, electric light and heat, running water and electric cooking facilities. At sthe same time it serves as a reservoir of munitions and contains spare machine guns. By a tunnel sixty feet underground the advance posts* "communicate wiTh a second girdle of forts of more elaborate construction. This• - second chain, runs aoout a '"fnile to the rear. Here-are to be massed reserves of man-power and equipment. 'Here also, deep in the ground, are-forward dressing stations and hospitals, electric, generating stations communicating with the rear by broader subterranean passages. The steel turrets of the second chain forts have rapid-firing light artillery. This second chain may be saw. to serve as a feeder to the front line. Things are so- arranged that one second line fort serves as feeder and support to ten or twelve front line .pill-boxes, on the average.

UNDERGROUND CITIES. 'ihe third linfe is made up of two immense underground cities, at both ends of the frontier, one in the north and one in the south, e,ach capable of containing or sending into attack a hundred thousand men equipped with field artillery, tanks, armoured cars, gas and liquid fire projectors. , .To the third 1 lie defence must also be reckoned scores of “Parcs mobiles”'' or rolling forts. These can be moyed; rapidly from one sector of the front. to the other, to the support of any threatened point in the line. In case of necessity they may also serve as wedges to be driven into the enemy’s front and as jumping off places for infantry attacks beyond the frontier. Simultaneously with the northern border, from Basle to Luxembourg, the Italian Frontier, from the Alps to the Mediterranean, where not a single fort existed hitherto, is being put into a state of defence. In this sector the French engineers are overcoming immense difficulties. As they are unable to dig into the soil, forts and obsei Nation posts are drilled and blasted into the granite.

This gigantic' system of defence will he the most efficient and powerful the world has ever seen. For ten years 20,000 foreign labourers have been at work on it under the guidance of the entire military engineering corps of France. In its main outline it is tne conception of Marshal Potain that its completion in two. years is virtually assured may be seen in Petain’s resignation from the supreme direction of the scheme, to devote lnmself exclusively to the study of th„e weakest link in the defence of an armed camp, as France would become in the event of war, that is to say. the aerial approach. 1