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Greymouth Evening Star, 28 March 1930, Page 9

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FANTASTIC GERMAN SCHEME To make the Continent of Europe bigger by more than 100,000 square miles —nearly the area of the British Isles —is the stupendous proposal of a number of German engineers and experts. t Their plan is to drain the southern part of the North Sea, and so link up England with Belgium, Holland, Germany and Denmark, as was probably the case in pre-historic times. It is estimated that the reclaimed land would provide room for 20,000,000 people. While Holland is busy draining a large part of the Zuider Zee (writes George Renwick, special correspondent of the “Daily Chronicle” from Vienna), a number of German engineers and experts are working at -a grandiose scheme for wresting from the waters of the North Sea no Iss than 115,000 square miles of land, or more than half its total extent. This would add to Europe a territory nearly equal in size to Italy, an area which probably was dry land in times long before the dawn of recorded history.

The vast plan would take its pressent coast-line from Holland, and give Belgium a canal in return for a sea. Amsterdam would become an inland city and Hamburg virtually a Baltic port. I The mouths of the Thames, the Schneldt and the Rhine would be linked up by canals with English Channel.

England would bcome a Continental country linked by railways across .the reclaimed land with Germany, Belgium, and Holland. Even a Channel Tunnel would become as antiquated as a stage-coach. TWO GREAT DAMS Essex and Suffolk would no longer be on the North Sea, and Norfolk would be shut off from it save on the coast of the Wash. The southern part of-the North Sea, the experts point out is relatively shallow. In that part which, under* the fantastic scheme, it is proposd to drain, the depth is nowhere more than 180 ft. This area would be shut off from the northern part by a stupendous dam, nearly 450 miles long, stretching from the neighbourhood of Hunstanton, in Norfolk, to the Skagerrak coast of Denmark.

Another dam, about 150 miles in length, would run from the Essex coast, on the estuary of the Thames, round Kent to between Dover* and Calais, and then along the seaboard of the Continent to the Dutch shores near Scheveningen.

Dover would be linked by a great bridge to that point of the dam which would jut into the Straits of Dover, and another bridge would carry railway and road to Calais. Thus a Channel tunnel would go completely out of date.

A third and much shorter dam would divert the waters of the Weser and the Elbe into the Kiel Canal and the Baltic Sea, by which the shipping of Bremen and Hamburg would have to seek the oceans on the world The average height of the dams would be about 90ft.

NEW COAD AND OIL FIELDS The dreamers of this amazing dream' reckon that the drained area would provide room for something like 20 millions of people. This, they hold, would be a great boon to neighbouring countries, from which emigration has, in recent years, been reduced to a very considerable extent. Experts say that minerals would be found in abundance, especially coal, beneath the reclaimed area., and that there may even be big oilfields. The wealth to be found in sunken ships would, they believe, be enormous. The engineers and various experts who are studying the matter frankly admit that there are many difficulties in the way of the realisation of the vast project, apart from the tremendous technical work of drainage. On the map of their dreams, which would have roused Jules Verne’s admiration, those who have worked out this prodigious change in the map of Europe, have placed 15 large and small towns. « But, so far, they have given a name Jto only one—Neu Hamburg (New

Hamburg), which certainly seems to be a good deal too far away from its namesake to deserve the title, and to be well outside what could possibly be Germany’s share of the spoils of the conquest of the North Sea.