RUMANIA: Unfinished Canal

One of the biggest public improvements promised the people by the Rumanian People's Democracy was to be the 50-mile-long, 200-ft.-wide Danube-Black Sea Canal, a project long dreamed of by Russian czars, British promoters and Bucharest businessmen. It would cut 170 miles off the route, allow deep-draught Red vessels to sail into Europe's heart, and reclaim by irrigation the vast, poor Dobruja plain through which it flowed.

Ground was broken in the spring of 1950; target date was 1955. Every four miles along the route, a camp sprang up to house 60,000 prisoners, redeeming themselves through "socialist labor," i.e., as slaves.

Last week, invited to the forbidden city of Bucharest to report a Congress of the World Federation of Democratic Youth,† four Western newsmen got their first interview in five years with the Foreign Minister, and asked about the canal. His answer: "The material and moral forces of the people should be concentrated on those works that will most rapidly raise their living standards. The continuation or discontinuation of work on the canal is not essential." In other words, work on the canal had been dropped, and the reason given fitted in with the Kremlin's big switch from capital goods to consumer goods. Actually, the canal project was a bust. Nearly two-thirds of the scheduled construction time had elapsed before work was stopped, but less than six of its 50 miles had been finished.