Word: simplon
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...Against attack the Swiss have aces to play. They would destroy the three great Alpine tunnels, Lotschberg, St. Gotthard and Simplon. Man for man, Switzerland probably has the second best army in Europe today. Its general staff, under sagacious, diminutive, popular General Henri Guisan (the fourth general in Swiss history),* has built in the Alps a kernel of defense which an army thrice the size of the Swiss Army (600,000 men) might need valuable months to crack. The Swiss Army can be mobilized in half an hour...
That was all very well, but before invading Switzerland the Axis will think four times. One thought will be for the tough little Swiss Army, one for the perpendicular Swiss terrain. Two thoughts will be for the St. Gotthard and Simplon tunnels, which the Swiss could blow up and thereby close two of Italy's five life lines for German coal and other things. Dynamite, not diplomacy, has kept Switzerland an island of comparative freedom in the heart of Hitler's Europe...
...lest its neutral and holy illumination guide airborne enemies on a raid. Inside, disheartened Pius XII knelt for an hour in his chapel in prayer. British diplomats would be evacuated by warship to Albania, thence could make their way into still neutral Greece, it was said. The Simplon-Orient Express had, of course, stopped running...
Soviet Premier Molotov promptly sent instructions which caused Ambassador Suritz, now persona non grata in France, to swing aboard the Simplon Express last week. At that, Ambassador Suritz could not have been wholly sorry to leave Paris. Since the war with Finland his Government has been a good deal less than popular in France. On a recent evening French Playwright René Fauchois saw the Ambassador rolling by in his bulletproof limousine, hollered: "Vive la Finlande!" 'Bulletproof notwithstanding, the Ambassador dived for the car's floor...
...seized by the Italians last April. Having spent most of the time since his flight from Albania at Istanbul, Turkey, Zog recently decided to transfer his home to France. Shortest and quickest route from Istanbul to Paris would have been by rail on either the Orient Express or the Simplon Orient. The Orient goes through Germany and the Simplon through Italy. Zog first arranged to travel by Soviet steamer from Istanbul direct to Marseille, stopping only at Peiraeus, Greece, and Alexandria, Egypt. Normal route of such a journey, however, is through the Strait of Messina, on one side of which...