GIBRALTAR.

Manawatu Standard, Volume LVII, Issue 196, 20 July 1937, Page 8

GIBRALTAR.

Questions lately asked in the House of Commons have caused serious disquiet as to the future of Gibraltar. For many years the “ltock” has been the connotation of impregnable strength, ensuring safety for British snips that have to pass through tne straits to the East, the guardian indeed of Imperial interests in the Eastern Mediterranean; but now there is real anxiety* as to its impregnability. The Foreign Secretary admitted that General Franco was said to have installed guns near Gibraltar, and now the correspondent of a London newspaper gives interesting details to show that the “ltock” is very nearly ringed with heavy guns and underground fortifications. Heavy batteries, he says, have been installed along 15 miles of the coast between Algeciras and Tarifa, and also at San Roque just two miles behind Gibraltar. German engineers are said to have supervised the construction of the fortifications, and the guns themselves have come from Germany and been mounted by German technicians. A study of the map will show the very serious menace to Gibraltar from the fortifications that have _ been constructed on Spanish territory. The Abyssinian War revealed the grave difficulties that would con front British shipping in the event of hostilities in the Mediterranean, and Britain has been giving most serious consideration to the greater strengthening of her naval bases there. The alternative route via the Cape was then used by several ships, but it has been pointed out that an air base in the Canary Islands would endanger the passage of vessels southwards. _ The point, as expressed by a British military authority, is that a militaryminded Spain, allied with the Fascist Powers, might make Gibraltar untenable. That this situation has been advanced, if it has not arrived, appears clear from the questions asked in Parliament and from statements which have yet to be denied as accurate. General I ranco has looked to Germany and It-alv for help against the established Government, and the fact that Britain has remained neutral and tried to avert a serious conflagration would weigh with him should he succeed in the civil war. The situation is disturbing.