SUEZ CANAL

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume LV, Issue 17176, 5 February 1930, Page 7

SUEZ CANAL

PROTECTION DURING WAR MONUMENT TO SOLDIERS (British Official Wireless,! Rec. 10 a.m. \ ;■■ RUGBY, Feb. 3. Mr. Arthur Henderson has addressed a letter to. Sir lan Malcolm, one of the three' British directors of the Suez Canal Co. in Paris, informing him that arrangements are being made for His Majesty's ship Caledon to proceed to lsmailia to be present at the unveiling' of the monument which the Suez Canal Co. has ereoted there in commemoration of the services and sacrifices of the Allied forces during the Great War for the defence of Egypt and the protection of the Sue/. Canal. Mr. Henderson expressed on behalf of th.e British Government the hope that this monument may perpetuate for all time not only the gallantry of "the officers and men to whose memory it is dedicated, bat also the gratitude of tho.se upon whose behalf the supreme sacrifice was made. An lsmailia message states that a distinguished gathering of representatives of the Allies attended the unveiling of the memorial by the Marquis de Vogue, chairman of the Canal Co., whe paid a tribute to the exploits of warships and troops, including the New Zealanders and the Australians.

SIXTIETH ANNIVERSARY FEAT OP, FRENCHMAN STOCK WORTH £725000,000 LONDON, Dec. 21. Sixty years ago last autumn the Suez Canal'was opened, and the great sea. link between Britain and India was forged. What it has meant to Britain and indeed to most of the cities of the Mediterranean is indicated in an article specially contributed to .the Times by Sir lanJlamilton, one of,the three British Government representatives on the Suez Canal Board. "It shortened the routes from London to Bombay, Calcutta, and Melbourne," he writes,'"by 4563, 3667 and 645 miles respectively. 'lt multiplied ten-fold the trading of Great Britain with the Far East; it made the fortune of the ports: of Marseilles, Brindisi, and Trieste; it may be said to have created the export trade of Australia; it assured Egypt of a barrier of defence against attack from the East; and it provided England with a stategic highway to India which she can never give up. .-, : REMARKABLE" ENGINEER.. All this was done by a man whose career was in diplomacy, and who never (so far as I know) gave his attention to engineering problems until he was nearly 50 years old. For Ferdinand de Lesseps was born in the French consular service in 1805, and remained in it until 1849, when he retired with the rank of minister. One day, in 1854, while he was mending some the roof of his house in the country, he received a telegram from his old friend, Mahommet Said—he had been French consul in Cairo many years before —informing him that he, Mahommet Said; had become viceroy of Egypt, and asking him to return there on a visit. It was characteristic of the man, of his powers of ■vision and swift decision and inflexibility of purpose, that, he accepted this "invitation .immediately, and started for Egypt within a fortnight. We know now that ever since his apprenticeship in" Cairdp'fris imagination had been arrested by the idea of piercing the Isthmus of Suez, and so developing the canal, which existed in the time of King Seti'l (1380 8.C.), and is referred to.; fay Herodotus. Such a ' : scheme had been considered by Kings Louis XIV., XV. and XVI.. but had baffled them as it finally baffled Napoleon. STARTED IN 1859. | In 1859, with his own .hands, Lesseps turned the first sod of sand at the barren and desolate point on the shore of the Mediterranean which lias now become Port Said, a city of more than 100,000 inhabitants. . The following year, as the work progressed Southward through the desert, he began to build simultaneouesly the Fresh Water Canal from the Nile to Lake Timsah, the future centre point of his greater design. Without this regular and, copious supgly of drinking water which he afterwards etxended north and south to Port Said, and to Suez, it is doubtful whether the Suez Canal could have been completed. To this day the protection of the Fresh Water Canal is as essential to the maintenance of life and traffic on the maritime highway as the protection of the Suez Canal itself. By the beginning of 1862 the Fresh Water Canal had reached Lake Timsah, and a great load of responsibility was, lifted from the shoulders of Lesseps. By the end of the same year, in the presence of a mighty concourse of people, he was able to command the waters of the Mediterranean to flow into Lake Timsah. The barrage was broken down and the sea wate& rushed in to fill the placid lake. Now> half the canal was built; the rest of it presented no obstacles to le grand Francais; for, as he said himself, the Pharaohs had already done it before him. It-was-merely a ,quost}qn i ,of i .time. BRITAIN 810 SHAREHOLDER. "Great Britain became the greatest shareholder-in the company, through the purchase from the Khedive, of 176,602 shares (7-16 of the total issue) at the price of £4,000,000. Those shares are now worth £12,000,000 on the market, and they have brought in to the British Treasury, by Way of annual dividend and interest, the enormous total sum of £36,000,000. * "The present concession expires in 1968; it has but 39 more years to run. Negotiations for a new concession miist be undertaken before very long. In the light of post mistakes, as also of evidence, in 1882 and 1914, of the necessity of the Suez Oanal being kept in.perfect order and in firm hands, it remains for the British Government, for the people of these islands and of our distant Dominions in close collaboration with the French, to see that that predominant interest in the Suez Canal which secures its control shall never pass away from them."