A Horrible Thing

Paris' Eiffel Tower is a gaunt, startling skeleton of bare iron bones which hypersensitive esthetes have often called "a horrible thing ... a monster of the imagination." But ever since it was finished in 1889, the 984-foot tower has been jealously adored as a symbol of Paris. It has been visited by 18 millions. It has traveled worldwide by post card, is clearly imprinted on the mind's eye of a large part of the world's population. It has inspired countless little boys playing with sets of Meccano.

At various times the tower has supported a brass cannon for noonday salutes, wireless and television stations, an aerodynamics laboratory, a great Citroen sign, a mighty thermometer in electric lights. For years the tower's top contained the tiny apartment of its builder, Alexandre Gustave Eiffel, pioneer steel-bridge engineer, who died in 1923 at 91.

Gustave Eiffel once said: "My tower will stand a thousand years." But the structure contains some 8,000 tons of iron. Last week rumors spread that it would be dismantled to feed Adolf Hitler's war machine.

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