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Show si-- f - - s v : s 'J t .- 'I f " i - 3 V-fi -J? v I Industrial Panorama In the Saar. Prepared by National Geographic Society, Washington, D. C. WNU Service. THOUGH barely 738 square miles in area and with fewer than 825,000 people, the Saar has been one of Europe's most publicized pub-licized regions since the World war. Powder keg .of Europe; witches' caldron; political sore spot For years such graphic labels have been tacked onto this small but highly Industrialized region lying north of Alsace-Lorraine between France and Germany. From the days of Attila and the Caesars down to Foch and Von Hindenburg, Its valleys and wooded hills have rocked and echoed to the tramp and shouts of marching armies. Geographically, the Saar Is an Irregular Ir-regular patch of hilly land crossed by small valleys. It lies alongside Luxembourg, forms a buffer state between France and Germany, and was cut from the two German states of Prussia and Bavaria. With a population about equal to that of Boston proper, it shelters more than 1,000 people per square mile one of the most densely settled set-tled areas in all Europe. Only such miniature European states as Andora, Liechtenstein, San Marino and Monaco are smaller than this tiny, yet dynamic country. coun-try. America knows no state so dwarfish. Delaware is about three times the Saar's size, yet has less than a third its population. Saarbrucken, metropolis of the Saar, has only 132,400 people; yet in one year Saar trains haul 00,000,-000 00,000,-000 passengers! Sit in any stuffy cafe at Saarbrucken, Saar-brucken, watch the guests eat red cabbage and boiled pork, or sip fat steins of beer as the band plays heavy Wagner music, and the place seems just another German industrial indus-trial center. But look into its eventful annals, or make a careful trip about Its historic roads and ruins, and you find a land with a past peculiar to Itself. Saar Problem In Caesar's Time. There was, In fact, a Saar problem prob-lem even in Roman times, when blond men from the east of the Rhine already had Invaded this basin. In Caesar's "Commentaries" you read of these early German settlers. One Roman report of the time says that 120,000 barbarians, enamored of Gaul, had settled here. Caesar feared these Germans might menace Rome itself; so he helped the Gauls drive them back across the Rhine. His battles on the Aisne and elsewhere were precursors pre-cursors of centuries of fighting along the Rhine. Some Roman military roads hereabouts here-abouts are shown on the Peutlnger map of about 200 A. D. One ran north from Argentoratum (now Strasbourg) to the Saar basin. About this same time the Romans built a castle at a point on the Saar river where It was bridged by their military road from Paris to Mainz. Saarbrucken was so named, meaning mean-ing "Saar Bridge." Dense forests choked all the basin ba-sin then, forests frequented by heathen druids, by wild Celtic tribes who hunted deer and boars with spears. Scattered ruins of menhirs, men-hirs, dolmens and cromlechs, symbols sym-bols of the druid cult, have been found in the Saar forests. Roman ruins are there If yon dig ruins of villas, of baths and bridges, some almost In the shadow of early Christian churches. At Tholey Is a church that dates from the Thirteenth century. In sharp contrast, near Saarbrucken Is a mosque built by the French during dur-ing the World war, wherein their Moroccan soldiers might pray I Long Held by Germans. Strategically, the Saar lies on a natural route between France and Germany, and for centuries they have disputed as to where their boundary lines should be fixed. Soon after the break up of Charlemagne's Char-lemagne's empire, and the Treaty of Verdun, In Si-'!, the Saar became German soil. Briefly, for more than a thousand thou-sand years prior to the Versailles treaty, Germany held the Saar, except ex-cept for two short periods, the second sec-ond being the years from 17fi3 to 1S13, when Napoleon pushed the French frontier to the Rhine. When r.lucher and his Prussians advanced Into France In 1S13, he followed the very route taken by the German hordes when the Roman empire fell. It was so In the Franco-Prussian war; Von Moltke, In 1S70, followed Blucher's route of 1S13, and about Saarbrucken came one of the first clashes of that war which helped Bismarck to found his German empire. em-pire. Again, of course, in the World war, the armies passed this way, and many an allied soldier washed his shirt In the Saar, the Moselle and the Rhine, or traded cigarettes and white bread to willing frauleins for a jug of wine. Fly over Saarlouis, where Marshal Mar-shal Ney was born, and in Its very heart you see the outline of the old, forts built by Louis XIV of France. Dating, as a town, from 1GS0, Its people lived for more than 200 years almost wholly by trading with the garrisons first French, then German, Ger-man, then French again. Today old walls and moats that encircled the fort have been torn down and filled to make broad, smooth streets, as the Americans did with parts of Manila. German Infantry, artillery, cavalry, cav-alry, army wagons all the money-spending money-spending machinery of war made Saarlouis a busy town until after the World war. When they evacuated, evacu-ated, the French came In for a while; but now few occupants are found for all the vast barrncks. It Is quiet, almost too quiet, for those residents who remember the band concerts, the glittering reviews, re-views, and fat army pay roils of other days. French Are Scarce There. German in race, speech, culture, and traditions, . the Saar showed by a pTe-war census only about one person in 20Q with French as his native tongue. It was simply a legal le-gal accident at Versailles which made these people citizens, temporarily, tempo-rarily, of a phantom state. The Saar, under that treaty, gained no nationality, no president or other ruler of its own. Instead, a commission com-mission of five Europeans was named by the League of Nations to administer the territory's affairs until the plebiscite. By treaty the Saar went under a customs union with France; French customs guards were set to patrol the line between Germany and the Saar and French money was put Into use. To pay France for her own cjjal mines damaged by Germans In the World war, she was given the coal mines In the Saar. The treaty provided also that after the plebiscite Germany might buy these mines back ngain If she wished, and such an agreement was concluded late in 1034. Only around Saarlouis is any French Influence noticeable, and that Is not due to the presence there of many living Frenchmen. Such Influence In-fluence belongs to the past Van-ban's Van-ban's old forts built when Louis XIV made this a French garrison town; French names and epitaphs In the cemetery; and an odd local dialect current among older residents, resi-dents, a curious blend of German and French. To see how thoroughly German the region Is, In speech and non-timent, non-timent, you have only to mingle with any holiday crowd and listen to the songs, the speeches, and the music; or read the papers; or see what crowds follow broadcasts from the radio stations at Frankfurt Frank-furt and Slnttgnrt. Industry Is Intensive. As In the Ruhr, Industry here Is compact, Intensive, and theatrical In Its setting. Like volcanoes, Its giant mills, as at Volkllngen (2:)0,'JGI), belch fortli clouds of thick gray smoke; the red glare of blast furnaces turns black night Into brilliant Gehenna. Under every hill Is coal. Over every mine Is a big wheel on a tower; tow-er; again and a'ain you see the big wheel spin, as It winds up a cable that lifts Ita load from deep In the earth. This Is the only place on earth where you see rnins and st';el mills closely crowded by forests, an If hlt3 of Industrial Pittsburgh were set In one of our forest reserves. The wooded slopes of the winding Saar river all covered wilh snow much resemble Algonquin park In Ontario In winter; It gei'tns the woods must be as dense and mys- ! terlous as when druids built their j sacrificial altars there and hungry pagan Celts searched for wild meat I |