OVER THE MOUNTAINS BY BOAT

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 83, Issue 31, 7 February 1939, Page 11

OVER THE MOUNTAINS BY BOAT

Germany Plans to Link Rhine and Danube

rpHE announcerm**, that the RhineDanube Cana], on which construction is getting under way, is to be completed by 1945 without fail may well mean more for the realisation of German ambitions than did all the ultimately futile battles of the World War, writes Albion Ross from Berlin to the New York Times. A catfal is a tame affair, but in this case it aims at the economic hegemony of Central and South-eastern Europe, and so political domination. The significance of the canal is simply this: On the lower Rhii jh in the so-called Ruhr country is probably the most intensely developed industrial territory in the world, planted on the largest coal reserve in the European continent. All along the Danube and adjoining the Black Sea is the still largely undeveloped Balkan and Turkish market. Once German industry has at its disposal a cheap waterway all the way from the ultra-modern and low-wage factories of the Ruhr to the farms, oil fields, and mines of the South-East, it will have set up an economic equation that in the long run probably neither wars nor diplomacy can change. To date it has been possible for other countries to compete with Germany in South-Eastern Europe because industrial North Germany had either to ship around Europe by water or transport by rail to the Danube and

tranship to barges. How the greater part of Eastern Europe can escape almost complete German economic domination when the Reich begins to pump minimumprice industrial goods down the Danube and offer an ever-ready market for Balkan staples, it is hard to see. Need Proved During War. It was the World War that awoke Germany to the primary importance of joining Rhine and Danube. The Danube was the backbone of German military operations in the Balkans and

Turkey. It would have been infinitely more valuable if Krupp cannon and the other products of the Ruhr could have been shipped by water all the way in return for the wheat and oil which the Reich so sftrely needed. Right after the war there was formed the Canal Association, which has been working slowly on the project ever since. There can be no doubt that if another major war comes, Germany will make a rush to control the whole Danube Basin as the source of food supplies and of raw materials. Now there is also Austria. Its most valuable product for the Reich is timber, an awkward and expensive thing io transport by rail. Austria’s next most valuable contribution to the Reich economy is ore of various sorts, notably iron. The canal is being constructed for barges and river steamers of 1200 tons capacity, the size of those that bear the brunt of the heavy traffic on the lower Rhine and even venture'around by sea to Hamburg. Vessels of the same size wallow up and down the Danube filled with grain, timber, ore, and oil. For barges of 120 tons capacity there exists already the so-called Ludwig's Canal between the Main River and the Danube, but the Main is often unnavigable and the canal impracticable. Charlemagne The First. It was Charlemagne, a little over a thousand years ago, who first started to dig a canal from the Rhine to the Danube. Ludwig, King of Bavaria,

accomplished the project formally 1848, though his canal eventually served no purpose. In “Way of a Transgressor,” Negley Farson describes how he sailed across Europe. He had come up the broad and tranquil Rhine to Mainz, where “after a temporary easement of effort,” he entered the Main to begin the 240mile climb up to Bamberg. The Main he thought an enchanting river: “It: steep mountain slopes are dotted with villages like the old German illustrations for ‘Grimms’ Fairy Tales.’ Goose greens, high, wedge-shaped little roofs, and storks’ nests on the chimney tops Under our own power, and by much hauling and pushing, we got up as far as Obernau, above Wurzburg, but there we had a rebuff. The Main swept us back; and at Aschaffenburg, below the palace of Mad Ludwig, we had to make fast to the Kette-Boot. The Kette-Boot, the chain boat that pulls itself up on one continuous chain the 190 miles between Aschaffenburg and Bamberg, is one of the weirdest marine monsters afloat. Its grinding motors pull the chain in at the bow and disgodge it from the Kette-Boot’s stern. And, with eight barges in tow and Flame (Farson’s craft) lashed to her side, we anchored off Dorfprozelten that first night. Grinding along, hauling ourselves up against the current of the Main from six in the morning until eight at night, we made exactly thirtythree miles. That was our pace. “That gave us plenty of time to see the countryside. The deep-forested mountains, the little villages with their ancient stone walls still intact . . , and then the deep hills of the vineyards which supplied the fine white wines we drank so freely all day. “Even ascending the Main to Aschaffenburg we- had climbed through twelve red standstone locks in fiftyfour miles. Now, at Bamberg, we entered one of the most beautiful canals

in the world —the Old Ludwig’s. It had been begun by Charlemagne and was now almost dying away. We were probably the first and last craft of our type to go through it. Four miles longer than Suez, twice as long as Panama, it was then the only freshwater link across Europe connecting ! the North and Black Seas. Probably the most unknown and least-used waterway in the world, the German Consulate had never heard of it when we tried to find out in London if it was still open to even small craft. It climbed over the fabulously-beautiful Frankischer Jura mountains in a series of steps —101 locks in 107 miles. So shallow and so overgrown with weeds was it that we could not use our motor, and I hauled Flame with a rope around my waist over the Frankischer Jura range! As soon as breakfast was over I would go out on the towpath and turn myself into a horse. Flame was 2J tons dead weight, and it took me three weeks to pull’ her over the mountains that 107 miles. There were places where, straining on my rope, I could look down on the roofs of the villages lying below me. . . . For three enchanted weeks we climbed over the Frankischer Jura mountains, then we locked out into the pleasant little Atmuhl, went down that tributary, and there—racing and grey—was the Upper Danube beginning its 1600-mile journey down to the Black Sea.” The Germans hope the new cana» will prove more practicable than Ludwig’s Canal, proceeds the New York t 1v...-. me posswiixty or lu.’iure cannot be entirely ignored. The trouble with the present plan is that it calls for sixty locks carrying barges over one range of hills after another. Between Nuremberg and the Danube barges will

pass through forty-five locks in order to climb a range of hills 1200 feet high and come down again. If traffic becomes heavy, days upon days of delay can hardly be avoided. In war time one successful air raid would be likely to put the canal out of commission for weeks and perhaps months. Considering the immense original investment and the wages of canal-boat crews and canal employees at the locks, it is not certain that so slow a means of transportation will prove so economical after all The total cost when the project ii completed has been provisionally esti* mated at 750,000,000 marks, of which 400,000,000 will be for the principal stretch extending from Bamberg to Kelheim, the balance of 350,000,000 being required for regulating th« canal, the Danube and the Main from Mayence to Bamberg, and for bridge end sluice construction. To The Canal Proper. From the Rhine vessels will proceed up the Main past Wuerzburg through the locks to a point a few miles from Bamberg. Here the canal proper begins. It will be 112 miles long, reaching the Danube almost due south at Kelheim, just above Regensburg. Halfway to the Danube it will pass through Nuremberg, and just beyond Nuremberg begins the steep climb over tht so-called German Jura. The German and Austrian course of the Danube also is to be deepened, and several dams will be introduced to keep up the water leved and, incidentally, provide electric power. Electric power stations will be installed at many of the locks along the canal. At Vienna construction will start soon on a river-boat and barge port more extensive than any other on the Danube. There is also a plan to string along the whole course of this waterway within German territory a series of new industries. Electric power will be provided at minimum rates in somewhat the Tennessee Valley fashion and cheap transportation provided simultaneously. Large industries are to be encouraged on the course of the Danube through Bavaria, employing power to be developed in Austria, where useful water is going to waste. This programme will give the Reich another industrial district like that being developed In lower Saxony, which is further away from the French border and therefore easier to protect than the Ruh*.