The Southland Times PUBLISHED EVERY MORNING “LUCEO NON URO” MONDAY, JULY 19, 1937. The Rising Tide Of Rumour

Southland Times, Issue 23255, 19 July 1937, Page 6

The Southland Times PUBLISHED EVERY MORNING “LUCEO NON URO” MONDAY, JULY 19, 1937. The Rising Tide Of Rumour

These are days in which rumour is active on many fronts. The war in Spain, a centre of reality, has cast a shadow that falls in distant and unexpected places. A cable message printed this morning quotes a correspondent of The Daily Herald who describes the way in which Gibraltar is being ringed with heavy guns and fortifications. There is really nothing surprising in the fact that the rebels—and their allies —are strengthening their positions in a territory which includes every point at the entrance to the Mediterranean except the neutral zone of Tangier and Gibraltar itself. Guns placed near Algeciras and at San Roque are not necessarily intended for future operations against the Rock, although such operations are certain to have been included among the possibilities considered by German staff officers. It is probably from the air that Gibraltar has most to fear: there are a dozen places in the near neighbourhood from which enemy bombers could be sent over with all the advantage of a surprise attack. Without Gibraltar the guns would be landed just the same. The entrance to the Mediterranean is the obvious place for fortifications, and if the news is ominous it is because it implies the continuance of fascist preparation at a time when everything seems to depend on the acceptance of Britain’s proposals for non-inter-vention. There is no reason to doubt the authenticity of reports from Gibraltar. A message from Paris, however, quoted from a “well informed” —but unnamed — source, has all the sound of rumour. “It is alleged,” says this message, “that Germany has built fortifications and gun platforms in General Franco’s territory on top of the Pyrenees.” A work of this kind would be heavy and costly. The Pyrenees stand as high as 8000 feet in places, and seldom fall to less than 3000 feet. There is no easy way to the frontier; and the country is everywhere broken and difficult. Even if, after excessive labour, guns were mounted along the ridges of the inner Pyrenees, it is not easy to see what use could be made of them. They could, no doubt, “fire across a large area of French territory,” but it would be an area inhabited mostly by sheep. Longrange guns might drop shells in country towns like Tarbes and Pau, but the nearest place of any size—Toulouse—is more than a hundred miles from the highest point in General Franco’s territory. Germany could use an enormous amount of ammunition on this region with very little result. Even if French troops were massing in the Pyrenean valleys to resist an enemy advance it is not big guns that would be needed against them so much as a fleet of aeroplanes. In any c&se an attack from this direction could never be anything more than an auxiliary movement, attempted as a means of drawing French troops from another frontier. An advance through mountainous country would involve problems of transport, supplies and reserves so severe that anything short of an immediate success would mean disaster for the invaders. It is quite possible that if non-inter-vention fails there will ultimately be German forces on the Pyrenean frontier; but their presence will be mainly symbolic. In the meantime the growth of rumour should not be unexpected. There are countries far removed from Spain where the same uneasy fears are breaking into a wildness of theory and story. “Phantom flyers” have been sighted over the polar districts of the Scandinavian peninsula; Field-Marshal von Blomberg is said to have taken “a secret cruise along the coast of Norway;” and there has been talk of a foreign submarine in a Norwegian fjord. These rumours have the sound of a juvenile adventure fiction; their increase in a time of world unrest makes it harder to trace the actual course of events. It is unfortunately true that we live in a time when the writers of sensational fiction come near to the notes of prophecy. Rumour has been able to thrive in all ages, but more in some than in others. Our own period promises to be a propitious one for the fears that come in whispers.