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Timaru Herald, Volume CXLVIII, Issue 21559, 23 January 1940, Page 6

Impressions of the Maginot Line are given by Mr Harold Nicolson in a recent article in the Spectator. “I had already seen photographs and heard descriptions of that necklace of fortresses,” he says. “The actual details, the guns and the caseinates were more or less as I had imagined; and, in any case, they were beyond my comprehension. What took me completely by surprise was the giant scale of these preparations. I had expected something resembling a flotilla of cement torpedo-boats; I was confronted by a fleet of super-dreadnoughts. The magnitude of the enterprise left me thunderstruck. I had never supposed that the French possessed such a gift for dissimulation. We penetrated deep into that fantastic labyrinth. Great galleries stretched before us; the sound of wireless reached us from the messrooms; there came a clatter of dishes from the kitchens; they were singing as we passed the canteen.”