Up or Under ?
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IT is more than likely that a man will I land on the moon before a Channel Tunnel is built, a sad thought as the idea for the tunnel is over 150 years old and the benefits of lunar travel would scarcely be popularly appreciated.
In a stimulating book, "The Channel Tutinel " (Allan Wingate, 21s.), Humphrey Slater and Correlli Barnett record the history of the project in a highly readable fashion, and all operators who are responsible for sending either goods or passengers to the Continent would gain from scanning its pages.
Today, antagonism to a Channel Tunnel is almost dead. The only stumbling block to its construction is finance. But, for most of the period throughout which men of vision have pressed for this link with the Conti. nent, the position was the reverse: funds were available, but the loud voices of the jingoistic isolationists and the militarists who feared an invasion through the tunnel—an absurd postulation. as the authors point out—swayed the opinions of the mugwump politicians who brought the machinery of the bureaucracy into action to thwart the project at every turn.
Far from being a military liability in the pre-I.C.B.M. era, the Channel Tunnel inight well have been an asset in the last war, and the Dunkirk evacuation might
never have occurred. As a peacetime asset the value of a tunnel is obvious. and is underlined by the possibility of British participation in a Free Trade Area. although it should not -take precedence over the improvement of the internal highway system of this country. Better roads within Britain would assist in cutting the production costs of all our exports: a tunnel would facilitate the disnatch of only those destined for rho Contin cot.
And it would Make it easier for Contidental goods to be brought here. The authors mention that a tunnel would bring Lille, the great French textile centre, nearer to London than Manchester is.
Fortunately; perhaps, the tunnel will probably be built by private capital. One of the most fascinating chapters in the book charges the Suez Canal company, one of the interests concerned, in trying to stall off building the tunnel until Col. Nasser pays them compensation, whereas the French and British railways, successors to the early pioneers, and American financiers are said to want to make a start independently of such an indeterminate occasion. The tunnel's future is in the cockpit of financialargument.
. A question remains unanswered. Assuming that Ventilation problems can be overcome and road vehicles can use the tunnel (as distinct from a service solely provided by electric railways). on which side of the road will they drive? A.S. u43