BELGIUM IS PREPARED

Evening Post, Volume CXXVIII, Issue 107, 2 November 1939, Page 14

BELGIUM IS PREPARED

If, as previously,: the Nazis break their pledges and begin an invasion of Belgium they will meet -a country which is prepared for such an event. It might be thought that the role of a neutral in a European war is fairly satisfying. But in Holland in 1914-18 so many men had to remain mobilised that the National Debt rose proportionately to that of Britain. And the Belgians have never forgotten the fact that the Schlieffen plan, which was the basis of German war strategy in 1914, was prepared for years before the war broke out and provided for invasion of a country that Germany was pledged to respect. Belgium is in different plight from the* Netherlands today, for she has accepted a guarantee of her neutrality from Hitler since her abandonment of the Treaty of Locarno which would have aligned her with Britain and France in a new war. j The Netherlands is a neutralised State,! and it has declined to accept guaran-i tees, holding that they are useless. Belgium has been planning for years to resist any new German attack. The main defensive system lies, as it did in 1914, along the line of the Meuse Rdver, and the Liege, Namur, and Charleroi fortresses have been modernised and powerfully equipped. The p Itions oh the river have been made into ( a little Maginot Line. Within the past year this system has been supplemented by a new one which begins at the Meuse where it enters the Netherlands, runs southwards along the German-Luxembourg boundary, and connects with the French system at Longwy. This line runs through the Ardennes Forest. Observers who have travelled through the territory report that the preparations of the Belgians have been thorough. The landscape has been dotted with casemates, ditches, barbed-wire entanglements, and tank traps, and all the roads and bridges are reported to have been mined. In the hills are many machine-gun nests. Between the frontier and the Meuse Lines is a third and lesser line. In case the Nazis should try to come through the Netherlands casemates have been constructed along this frontier to stand tlie first shock of attack. Antwerp is now so heavily fortified that the Belgians believe it will prove impregnable. In addition flooding will be used as a form of defence, as it was in the World War. The main water . barrier would begin south of Antwerp : along a line in the direction of Turn- . hout, towards the frontier, and then ■ pass' south through Hasselt into, Netherlands territory.'