FRENCH CANAL

Wairarapa Times-Age, 4 January 1939, Page 9

FRENCH CANAL

ATLANTIC WILL JOIN MEDITERRANEAN SIGNIFICANCE TO TRADE INTERESTS. CHANNEL THROUGH HEART OF COUNTRY. Throughout modern history the French have led the way in the construction of ship canals, so that the proposal to build a big canal to take ocean liners through the heart of France, from Bordeaux on the Atlantic to La Nouvelle on the Mediterranean, at a cost of £90,000,000 may not cause great amazement. It was Ferdinand de Lesseps who conceived and carried out the construction of the Suez Canal, which brought the eastern and western worlds within hailing distance of one another and facilitated trade between the hemispheres. The same engineer was also the one who first conceived the linking of the Pacific and the Atlantic Oceans by the construction of a canal across the Isthmus of Panama. His company failed, it is true, but it certainly blazed the trail that was later picked up by America and finished with such thoroughness. Not only does the trans-France canal preserve tradition, then, but it has perhaps a deeper significance than the mere construction of a new waterway.

The straight cut qcross France by way of the valley of the Garonne will not only reduce the three or four day trip from Bordeaux to Marseilles, to one or one and a half days, but it promises a smooth and economical passage through the very heart of France, in place of a circuitous and often stormy passage along the coast of Spain, through the Straits of Gibraltar, and then northward the full length of the eastern coast of Spain. The port of Bordeaux lies well up the estuary of the River Gironde, one of the great waterways of Southern France. This big mouth of the sea would, presumably, be the entrance to the proposed canal. The canal would then follow a south-easterly route through the Gironde. Lotet Garonne, Tarn et Garonen, Haute Garonne and Aude, reaching the Mediterranean about 30 miles north of Perpignan, at La Novelle, near Narbonne.

As the crow flies this route would only be a little over 200 miles, but the distance the actual line of the proposed canal would traverse only survey engineers could measure, as the contours of the country dictate a route that will be half as long again. Of as much significance as anything is the linking of the names of England and Holland, with that of France in regard to a project the area of which is wholly in France. Doubtless trade interests would be vitally concerned —Britain with her enormous trade with India and the Far East (in normal times), and Holland, with her great interests in possessions in the East Indies.

Another point catches attention in connection with this vast project. Gibraltar, the rock fortress, which in the days of sail, was such an effective sentinel of the Mediterranean, has lost something of its value through scientific invention. The advance in the construction of the submarine and war planes have rendered this' outpost of the Empire rather less formidable, than it was in the days of Nelson. It was even stated last year that German agencies had established a battery of guns on the mainland of Spain that could put Gibraltar out of action. Whether that could be done cannot be stated definitely, but it seems to be quite true that guns of penetrating power were established on the Algeciras side of the Bay of Gibraltar, which might prove inconvenient to the garrison of the Old Rock. The possession, therefore, of such a canal, providing a short cut through from the Bay of Biscay to the Mediterranean, avoiding the Strait altogether, has certain strategic value internationally, apart altogether from the advantage it would give trading steamers.