CRUCIAL ISSUE

Auckland Star, Volume LXXIII, Issue 175, 27 July 1942, Page 3

CRUCIAL ISSUE

MOVE IN THE WEST

Imperative To Distract Axis

From. Soviet Front

Rec. 11.30 a.m. LONDON, July 26 "The crucial question for Britain and the United States is how to implement in time their pledges to Russia," says Mr. J. L. Garvin, writing in the Sunday Express. "The two nations' measureless resources for 1943-44 are pipe dreams compared with the instant necessities. The Allies' dominant air power will ravage Germany through and through, but this vanguard of the Western offensive will have to De followed at all costs by the military organisation of a second front somehow and somewhere. It is a palpable possibility that the destinies of mankind for centuries to come may be settled within the next three months-. "A deadly danger menaces Russia, he writes. "If Russia survives without any great British and American attempt to come to her aid their default will never be forgotten nor I forgiven."

Mr. Vernon Bartlett, M.P., said: "We are in such desperate danger of losing the war that anything that does not affect the war does not matter. We are in a more serious position than after Dunkirk, because to-day we have not the same stimulus or the same resources. Most of the world's raw materials are now at the disposal of the enemy. We may find in a very few days the Russians pushed back so far that they will not be able to carry out a counter-offensive. The feeling of frustration will become very dangerous unless we are soon able to do something appreciable to distract the attention of the Germans from the eastern front."

Mr. Hanson Baldwin, writing in the New York Times, says a second front at this stage would be more of a gamble than a deliberate choice, but the history of war is full of gambles, he adds. If Russia were to collapse eventual victory would be in doubt.