MOSCOW IN WAR

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 5, Issue 14, 9 February 1942, Page 3

MOSCOW IN WAR

CITY OF COURAGE

AN AMERICAN'S STORY

A striking word picture of Moscow in wartime is provided by Quentin Reynolds in "Collier's." This now-famous Avar correspondent, incidentally shared in the adventure of M. Litvinov and his; partjy in the air race against a storm over the Caspian Sea. The article was written just before the Russian Government left the capital. Moscow is far different from the Paris of June, 1940, he writes. Paris -was apathetic, indifferent. Thousands mumbled this false, self-deceiving phrase, "They'll never take Paris." Moscow reads the war news carefully, consults its maps, and is grave, but not grey with fear. Moscow is confident of the ul'timate triumph, but Moscow knows that months, maj'be years, of suffering lie ahead. Moscow is a city of realists taking its cue from Stalin, the greatest realist of them all. Moscow knows that her suffering so far has not been particularly heavy. She has not taken the beating that the people of Kiev and Odessa and Leningrad have taken, but she expects that the full force of the Luftwaffe will soon be hurled against her and she is ready. Our Kind 1 of People It is impossible to live long here without coming to love the people of Russia. They are decent, liomeloving people, and yoi£ could take a slice of them and drop them in our Midwest and within a few weeks you wouldn't be able to distinguish them from our own decent, lawabiding citizens. I haven't been in Russia long, but Fve been here long enough to learn that they are our kind of people. The other American and British correspondents feel as I do. I am no nearer to being a Comr munist than are you who. it ad this, hut I defy anyone to remain objective and impersonal when he is with the people of this city. No matter what your political convictions, these are people who want to go their own way; who cnlv want to solve their own problems, and today they find the greatest, most horrible battle of the ages being fought. I find it. impossible to be neutral in this struggle. So far food rationing here in Moscow is not severe. One can get as good'a meal in a factory kitchen today as one can get in a London West End hotel. There is no clothing rationing, but most of the mills are busy making uniforms and the shops have not a great variety of goods in them. But the people of Moscow are not clothes-conscious. As long as clothes are warm they need serve ne. such frivolous subsidiary purpose as to be ornamental. One may still buy furs, and there are tailors who will make j r ou fur coats or wraps at London and New York prices. Except for the uniforms one sees on the streets during the day and some queues in front of food shops, one might forget that the most terrible war in history is. being fought less than an hour's flying time away. Occasionally muddy uniforms and bandaged heads remind one that, the war comes to Moscow. Black-out is at? 6 o'clock now. It is a more severe black-out than we know in England. The buses and tramcars keep going and their lights and the occasional flashes from their overhead charged electric wires, the headlights from automobiles, and' the street lights makes one accustomed to the London black-out a bit dubious as to what effect the Moscow black-out might have. But when the sirens scream even "these lights fade. The buses and trams crawl back into their barns. Automobile headlights are extinguished. Traffic and street lighting die and Moscow prepares a black face to welcome her uninvited visitors. Once the raid commences one does not see a single light in the centre of the city.