Jolted

M. Andre Citroen, "French Henry Ford," received last week a nasty, grating, jerky jolt. His Trans-African Citroen Co., formed to finance a trans-Sahara route from Colomb-Bechar, southern terminus of the Algerian railways, to Timbuktu (distance of nearly 1,700 miles) was suddenly brought to an untimely end.

The route was to have been traversed in nine days by special Citroen auto mobiles, equipped with caterpillar tractors. Along the route M. Citroen had erected many cheap hotels where native jazz bands were to have amused the transient guests. M. Citroen, highly optimistic, had once said: "A new country is thrown open to auto tourists. Tourists, eager for new sights and new experiences, soon will be able to make this once hazardous trip with ease and dispatch. They will be deeply stirred by the magic of this unexplored land."

At the outset, it seemed as if the plan would work as smoothly as a piston in a well-oiled cylinder. But M. Citroen had not counted upon native bullets or, if he had, he had counted upon the sky-blue soldiers of France to stop them. Turbulent Moors disliked the headless, legless camels that were to scoot across the desert at 45 miles an hour, declared an unholy war upon them. French officers warned M. Citroen that they could not guarantee security to tourists in the desert--finis. Sadly, painfully, reluctantly, M. Citroen announced the abandonment of his scheme and presumably the greater part of the 15,000,000 francs that it has cost him. The King of the Belgians and General Petain, who were to have assisted at the opening ceremonies, were notified that there would be no such ceremonies.

Far away in the wide open spaces of the sandy Sahara, lights went out, hotels were closed. The night descended, the watch-fires of the tribes grew bright and there was great joy in Moorish camps at the ignominious retreat of the infidel.