CHANNEL TUNNEL

Wairarapa Times-Age, 19 March 1940, Page 6

CHANNEL TUNNEL

CASE FOR CONSTRUCTION

SIMPLE AND PROFITABLE,

PLAN NEVER UNDERSTOOD.

Why has the Channel Tunnel never been ‘built? In my opinion simply because the plan, long though it has been before the public, has neyer been adequately understood, writes Paul Dautz, chairman of the. French Tunnel Committee. It is quite time to dispel any lingering hesitations regarding it. and I am glad to have an opportunity of doing that. Let me first of all recall that some years ago. when last the question was discussed in Parliament in Great Britain—on June 30. 1930. to be precise—the proposal was only lost by seven votes in the House of Commons (172 against 179). The well-known member Sir William Bull, who, together with Sir Arthur Fell, had been so admirably persistent an advocate of the plan, wrote the next day in the Press: "I have no hesitation in saying that we are in no way discouraged by this setback. On the contrary, for my part I regard the result as extremely encouraging. Anyone who has made a close study of the plan realises what prejudice, confusion and ignorance still persists regarding it. All that i will have to be squarely faced before the Tunnel is built.” MANY ADVANTAGES. 1 would go so far as to say that among all the great modern undertakings ever contemplated. I can see none offering greater advantages than this. In the matter of the actual construction Nature itself provides the most favourable conditions possible, a I shallow sea—so metres at the outside —the bend of the Straits composed of easily workable chalk (cheese, your engineers call it), in which the whole length of the Tunnel can bo dug. if everything goes as one is entitled to expect, with the help of a simple bor-ing-machine: then, among the different strata superimposed on one another at the bottom of the Straits, a . layer of really providential chalk called grey Rouen chalk, reaching from one coast to the other and marked by a singuar impermeability; finally, this happens to lie between the two nearest points in the Straits of Dover, and is found nowhere else, so that there could never be more than one Tunnel, not a dozen in different places as the opponents of the plan suggested. French and British engineers, moreover, are agreed on the desirability of providing final evidence of the practicability of the plan by driving a miniature, tunnel from one side to the other, as the first of the series of operations. Clearly this gallery must be built first of all. for it may be described as the key of the whole work, providing the basis for estimates and establishing with considerable precision the cost of the construction of the main Tunnel. As to the cost. I think one is taking an outside figure in speaking of £30,000,000. actually less, unless I am mistaken, than the price of three battleships. The future submarine railway would run for only 39 kilometres under the sea, which is less than twice the length of the Simplon Tunnel. As to working expenses, British and French engineers agreed in 1930 with the experts of the British Committee, instituted in that year, in estimating what in technical language is called the working-coefficient at less than 20 per cent; I think it would be safe to say 17 per cent, that is that to earn £100.000.000 it would be sufficient to expend £17.000.000. and since conservative calculations put the receipts in the first year at £557,000,000, the very moderate increase of 10 per cent in traffic would be sufficient to bring in an extra £50,000.000 at a cost of not more than £8,000,000 or £9,000.000. This is based on the very moderate estimate of 3,000,000 passengers in the first year of working, a figure which is already reached by the Channel services from the different ports, and allotting to the Tunnel the transport of not more than 410,000 tons, ruling out all heavy, cheap, and mediumpriced goods. What anxiety, by the way. need the British Merchant Marine and certain railway systems, so far hostile, feel, seeing that the export and import trade by all their shipping-lines amounts to 700,000,000 tons a year, and that the steamships and ferry boats could well find useful employment elsewhere?

Is there any' need to emphasise the prospects before the future submarine railway? A direct connection which would link the two greatest cities in the world, next to New York, which would enable the journey to be performed in 41 to 5 hours (so that you could go and return the same day), which would by its European extension roach the Hinterland of Europe, where England still remains an unknown island, which would unquestionably bring still more European travellers to England than it would attract English to the Continent, which would make England the railhead of the trans-Continental routes to the East and the Cape of Good Hope.

CIVILISING AGENCY. The Channel Tunnel will bo a true civilising agency. Unfortunately, in present circumstances economic considerations are being relegated to the background, as the lamented Baron d'Erlanger said to me only' a few weeks ago. and subordinated to the strategic services which the Tunnel could render in case of war. The latter assume the highest importance if it is realised that the submarine railway' could handle 150 trains in each direction, providing transport for two divisions a day with all their equipment. It was Marshal Foch who said "The Channel Tunnel would make war in Western Europe impossible." and General Woygand has done us the honour of accepting the Vice-Presid-ency of our Tunnel Committee, with the special aim of studying its strategic role. 1 have not space within the limits of this article to dwell on the part the 1 unnel might play in the provisioning of Gt Brimin.; a tunnel would enable England to use all the French Atlantic ports, instead of its ships being compelled to converge on English ports to discharge their cargoes in the taco oi every kind of bombardment. One final word. There are those who fear that in case of war the roof of the Tunnel might be smashed in by a bomb. Really! Really! A roof about 50 metres' thick, covered with a mass of water consanlly in movement mother 50 metres deep! This is simply mental aberration. I can find no other word to apply to such a criticism