BUSINESS AS USUAL

Waikato Times, Volume 125, Issue 20955, 7 November 1939, Page 11

BUSINESS AS USUAL

UNPERTURBED VINTNERI GARNER WHILE GUNS ROAR (Times Air Mail Service) LONDON, October 6 A look-out tower on a Luxembourg hill-top, overlooking the Moselle Valley, has been my grandstand for the Western Front battlefield during the past week. For days and nights there has been no peace in Luxembourg because of the noise of the guns just over the border, reports the Luxembourg correspondent of the Daily Mirror. At Wintrange a farm-horse was killed by shell splinters. A little later, a village boy was injured when and breaking all the windows of the village school. And yet, apart from these small worries of purely local interest, Luxembourg people do not seem to feel the vibrations of four weeks of war. They are shut up in their grapa gathering, their one newspaper, their traditional affairs, carrying on everyday life while the guns roar a few miles away. They Fear Invasion The hundred thousand subjects of this neutral buffer State fear invasion. They are standing by. Jhe question is: Will Germany repeat Tier 1814 violation? “The fear began to grow when the German villages facing the borders were evacuated,” said an hotel keeper who remembered that German manoeuvre. “The fall of Saarbruecken may force the German Army to go into Luxembourg to relieve the pressure on their line by a flank attack. With the German and Allied forces not yet at close grips in this sector, the Luxembourgers are taking the war calmly. Grape gathering will be in full swing in a fortnight. The national lottery will soon be drawn. There was a military band in the square. One of the big debates in the Council chamber was the question of the tax on dogs. From this grandstand my soldierCustoms officer companion tells me that I have madness on my left, the coolness of Gomelin's waiting on my right, a noise above me like hell let loose, and behind me the vital work of Luxembourgers—plucking grapes. Twenty-five years ago he woke up to find the German Army marching down his street.