WALL OF STEEL

Rotorua Morning Post, Volume 1, Issue 202, 19 April 1932, Page 7

WALL OF STEEL

RING OF STRONG FORTS FOR DEFENCE OF FRANCE. BELIEVED IMPENETRABLE. Whatever arms cuts may or may not be decided upon at Geneva, France is taking it for granted that her present vast scheme of frontier fortification will not be affected and is pushing ahead the building of the country's great steel wall. Stretching from the English Channel to the Mediterrah'ean, the chain of modernised forts and pill-boxes is due for completion in two years, at a l cost of £20,000,000. The father of ! the extensive defence chain was the : late M. Anore 'Haginot, Minister for I War. One of the mightiest forts iri J the chain, at Hackenberg, facing GerJ many, is deseribed as a man-mafde Gibraltar. Deep down in the earth, the engineers of the French army have dug ! out an underground arsenal fitted with mechanical appliances, whereby shot t and shell can be rushed by a system j pf underground railroad to any of the smaller, subs'diary posts in the scheme of defence. The Hackenberg defends the great industrial area of Metz. There are other big mountains of steel like the Hackenberg fort, but some of them are above ground, like the Hocwald. These and half a dozen other big forts keep guard over the 220 miles of frontier from the 'edge of the tiny territory of Luxembourg down to the Swiss border. Linked with the big forts are numerous smaller pill-boxes, or machine-gun posts, sojne sunk even in the marshes pf the Rhine. Impenetrable. Going along Northern France by road, the traveller passes at regular intervals these mounds of steel, small or latge, peeping from the earth, each with its gun, or guns ready. Cross-fire between the forts would result in the creation of what, the French General Staff beli'eve, would be an impenetrable barrier in which no human thing could live. From the English Channel down to Luxembourg, the defences are not so important, being composed mainly of machine-gun nests. A breqk in the link occurs down the Franco-Swiss frontier. Below this line, the forts begin again, some perched amidst snow-bound crags, cut oif sometimes in winter for weeks at a time. The steel line runs down almost to the sea to protect Nice. At railheads and important crossroads, large concentrations of moveable defence material have been installed as part of the defence plan.