LOOKING AHEAD.

Auckland Star, Volume LXV, Issue 3, 4 January 1934, Page 2

LOOKING AHEAD.

NEW WAR CAPITAIi.

IF FRANCE IS INVADED.

STAFF CHOOSES VICHY.

PARIS, November 26.

German election results have brought the possibility of war nearer to reality in the minds of the French, and Paris is caref ally planning what it will do in the event of another invasion.

The bulk of the inhabitants will have to remain where they are, of course, in .spite of long-distance ehelling and aerial bombing. Steps are being taken to organise bombproof shelters all over Paris and train the civil population, however sketchily, in the use of gas masks.

But in spite of all precautions there is, unhappily, no doubt that any bombing from the air will be a ghastly affair, compared with which the bombing of large towns in the last war—London, for instance —will be little more than a trifle.

The question of what the French Government will do is naturally arousing a good deal of interest.

At a recent meeting the French. Cabinet considered plans submitted, by the general staff for the defence of the capital and the protection of the executive power in the event of a new invasion of France.

The general staff has proposed, it ie believed in well informed quarters, that in the event of invasion the seat of the French Government shall be transferred from Paris, not to Bordeaux—as during the last to Vichy. Paris is less than two hours' flight from the eastern frontier. Vichy, the little watering place in central France, hitherto frequented chiefly by wealthy people with maladies of the liver, is recommended by the military authorities as a war-time refuge for the French Government which is the leaet accessible to, and most easily defended from, assault from the- air.

The fact that the mountains of the Vosges. of the Jura and of Auvergne, stand between Vichy and tho eastern frontier makes plain the strategic advantage of the town. Vichy is, moreover, almost impossible to bombard with "Big Berthas" or other long-range artillery.—(ST.A.N.A.)