DEFENCES OF RUHR

Wairarapa Times-Age, 8 December 1939, Page 7

DEFENCES OF RUHR

SAID TO BE IMPREGNABLE. In view of the several recent R.A.F. flights over the Ruhr industrial area if Germany, it is worthy of note that on October 17 a Dutch newspaper, the Arnhemschc Courant. published rhe report of a special correspondent who had been sent to the Ruhr to study its air-raid defences. His conclusion was that the district was impregnable. Even it an enemy aeroplane should break through, he wrote, it would be immediately detected by searchlights, and if it evaded the balloon barrage it would be destroyed by the waiting German aeroplanes. If any of the Krupp factories were destroyed by air attack they would be working again in three weeks. Moreover, the German armaments industry was no longer, entirely concentrated in the Ruhr. The correspondent said he was struck by a feeling of half-surprise that no air attack had apparently been attempted. A.R.P. was much in evidence. The Dutch correspondent visited Essen. Steele. Bochun. Gelsenkirchen. Buer. Recklinghausen. Mulheim. Duisburg. Oberhausen. Wanne. Eickcl, Witten. Hagen, and Ludenscheid. Everywhere he saw signs of work at high pressure. If men were unobtainable. women were employed—even he was told, in the mines, though this he was unable to verify. A 12-hour day was now the normal for many workers. Germany believed she had good soldiers, and Field-Marshal Goering had told the workers that good soldiers could only fight with good weapons. "The people did not appear to be ill-nourished." the correspondent added. "In the restaurants the bills of fare are smaller and contain many meatless dishes. and well-dressed guests are often seen to wrap up part of their meat portions and take them away with, them."