FRANCE MENACED.

Manawatu Standard, Volume LVIII, Issue 228, 25 August 1938, Page 18

FRANCE MENACED.

TOWISRING FORTS. GERMAN SIEGFREID LINE. LONDON, Aug. 10. The formidable strength of the German ‘‘Siegfreid line” of fortifications and its menace to tho French frontier are described in tho ParisSoir. Every 160 yards a blockhouse rises along the line, a special article states. It needs only the pressing of a button and the French electricity station of Kembs, so important to defence, would be bombarded. The rock of Limbourg, near Markolsheim, which is crowned by an old Hapsburg castle, is now the Gibraltar’ of the Rhine. Big guns dominate Colmar and Strasbourg and the strategic railways of Alsace. Between Rliinau and Strasbourg (30 miles), 28 blockhouses have been completed and 300 others are being built. Each has five machine-guns, two mortars and two flame-throwers, together with underground shelters. Some 200 yards behind is the second line of defence, with rough trenches and barbed wire. The main line of blockhouses, which, it is reported, can be completed by September 15, is on the very edge of the Rhine. When it is pointed out that' winter floods might overflow into the blockhouses, German technicians reply that the line is intended only to safeguard the passage till about the end of September. By then the occasion would Kave passed as the blockhouses are purely defensive. FRENCH BANK COVERED. When the line is complete its fire will command every square yard of the French bank of the Rhine and 30,000 men can hold the line. Palisades o£ reeds and timber have hidden the work since June 26. Fully 10,000 men have worked day and night at fortifying Rhinau, centre of a double railway joining all the blockhouses. The Germans have again fortified the rock of Istern, from which guns can command the industrial basin of Mulhouse and the pass of Belfort. After a few minutes of firing Alsace would lack electric power, the article concludes, i