(While France talked of-a trans-Saharan railway for 40 years but never built it because economically the project did not justify itself, today the project is being rushed through under Nazi pressure and at French expense to suit the strategy vf Berlin.
How this great project, which will bring Nazi troops from North Africa to Dakar, facing the American continent, is being put through by the "slave" labour of impressed refugees and others, was related by one who worked on the line, but managed to escape to the United States.)
CROSS two thousand miles of Africa's greatest desert, one of the world's biggest railroad engineering feats is now under way. the outcome of France's collapse and the product of Hitler's desire for conquest.
Colomb-Bechar, lying on the.fringe of ihe Sahara Desert. has been so far the terminus of a railroad running south toward the desert from Oran. It is the point of departure for the trans. Sahara Railroad which will link the Mediterranean with the great West African port of Dakar.
For years this project has been under consideration; but ever since che first inception of the idea 40 years ago, its fulfilment has been postponed. There are important reasons, partly economic, bu mostly strategic, which have kept the question perennially alive. but its progress has been barred by the consideration of expense—5,000.000,000 francs as the lowest estimated cost of construction.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.