RAILWAY OVER SAHARA
GREAT FRENCH PROJECT. TRANSPORT FOR RECRUITS. Further details are now available regarding the announcement that .a Bill will shortly be laid before Parliament In connection with a proposed railway line across .the Sahara, writes the Paris correspondent of a London paper. The matter has become one or greater urgency as the result of the • passing- of the new military law providing for the recruiting of 250.000 native troops every year. The greater number of these troops will be drawn from Africa > and the question of their transport has now naturally arisen. The Secretariat-General of the Supreme War Council considered the possibilities of the realisation of a trans-Saharan railway. The Secre-tary-General of the Ministry of Public Works drew up the report. which was approved by the War Council, and this report was then submitted to the Supreme Council of National Defence, which, under the presidency or iM. Mlllerand, accepted its conclusions, including the proposed route starting from Oran through Colomb-Becliar, Beni Abbes, Adghar, Quallen Tessalit, and Bourem to Ouagadougou, south of the Niger, the point which It proposed to make a junction lor the French African lines. This is the route to be followed by a caterpillar-wheeled car mission, which it is propsed te send out shortly, and which is to explore the desert from Colomb-Bechar to Bourem, a distance of ISOO kilometres (1225 miles) i with a view to the establishment of an aeroplane service.
It is added that the Ministry of Public Works, as a result of the decision of the Supreme Council of National Defence, approached the P.L.JI. Railway Company, which already controls the Western Algerian railway system, and the company replied by placing in the hands of M. le Trocquer an application for a concession, regarding which an agreement has now been reached. The building 01 the railway, it is estimated i will take seven or eight years. It w'ill provide not only a strategic railway, but also an outlet for African products.
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Otaki Mail, 4 January 1924, Page 3
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329RAILWAY OVER SAHARA Otaki Mail, 4 January 1924, Page 3
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