MOVEMENT OF TROOPS

New Zealand Times, Volume L, Issue 11415, 11 January 1923, Page 6

MOVEMENT OF TROOPS

ENGINEERS AND RAILWAY WORKERS. BELGIAN HELP. Australian and NZ. Cable Awehttas. PARIS, January 9. ’The “Oeuvre” says that action will he taken on Thursday, when General Degoutte’s advance guards will pass the frontier of the neutral zone, fronting Dueaeldorf, Duisberg, and Ruhrort. When M. Poincare mounts the tribune of the Chamber, France will already have piled arms on Essen soil. Belgian soldiers will accompany French soldiers and the Allied engineers. The “Petit Parisien” states that the French engineers have arrived at Dusseldorf, but cannot proceed to the Ruhr because no French troops are there. Belgian and Italian engineers will shortly proceed to Dusseldorf. ANTI-FRENCH TRACTS. The “Journal” states that another contingent of French engineers has gone to Dusseldorf with detachments of railway workers and five officers. The “Matin’s” Coblenz correspondent says that the engineers will be accompanied to Essen by 23,000 soldiers. Violent anti-French tracts are circulating throughout the Rhineland. The “Petit Parisien” adds that the only soldiers sent to the Ruhr are those replacing General Degoutte’s army, which is spread over too large an area. CONTROL OF COAL OUTPUT. The “Matin’s” Coblenz correspondent says: “Once at Essen, France will control the exploitation of coal by means of the present organisation and dispatch it to Allied countries, collecting also the coal tax in the Allies’ name. Estimates of the consumption of coal in have increased by 101 per cent, since the war. Factories are working at fall pressure. Seven or eight furnaces out of every ten are alight.

“Owing to the coal shortage and the destruction of the French mines in wartime, the furnaces of Lorraine are stopped as a. result of the absence of German deliveries.”