RUSSIAN MAGNIFICENCE

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 6, Issue 62, 6 April 1943, Page 4

RUSSIAN MAGNIFICENCE

STALIN'S appeal to the Russian people for a supreme; effort to expell the hated invaders this summer, is an medication of the seriousness of the life and death struggle which must follbw the present uneasy lull on that vast bafctlefront. The desperate nature of Hitler's new bid for supremacy in the summer is borne out by the conscripting of youth as low as seventeen years of age, throughout Germany and her satallite states, for the Nazi war machine. With the winter campaign now definitely closed and the> armies of the Soviet having regained an area approximately the size of New Zealand, it becomes imperative if Hitler is to re-win something of his waning prestige to stage a new the titanic struggle which must reap him some of the fruits of victory for which his people thirst. Again, with an eye upon North African events, who is to gain-say that the appeal by Russia's great leader is not a time signal to the avenging armies in England held in readiness for the long awaited order for invasion. It can .be assumed that nothing in this war of split second events and tre-) mendous decisions is entirely by accident. Behind the Al-: fiied strategy there must exist, if we coulfi but see it! a vast concerted plan of campaign to crush the Nazi terror. To-day for instance we see the loosening of the last Axis grip upon Africa. We see Italy fearfully anticipating, invasion and across the sodden wastes of desolated European Russia, we hear the voice of Stalin calling for a supreme national effort. Have these great and important events coincided by mere force of circumstance or do they spell the opening of the grand finale, which is to be the Allied coup-de-grace to the terror which has darkened the threshhold of civilisation for three and a half ghastly years.