DEMAND FOR NEW OFFENSIVE

Dominion, Volume 35, Issue 256, 28 July 1942, Page 5

DEMAND FOR NEW OFFENSIVE

Minister Rebukes Demonstrators (Received July 27, 8.10 p.m.) LONDON, July 26. Sixty thousand people demonstrated in Trafalgar Square this evening in favour of the immediate opening of a second front. Mr. D. N. Pritt, K.C., the Labour member of Parliament, said: “We cannot afford to waste more time. Ships can be found, and if necessary we will put up with shorter rations. Fainthearts must be vanquished.” The following declaration was put to the assembly and approved amid scenes of enthusiasm: “Assembled at a most critical moment in the war, when the fate of Britain is at stake, we solemnly pledge to work with might and main for the immediate opening of a second front in Europe and to accept with a stern spirit all sacrifices which this mighty task demands, to redouble our efforts to produce weapons of victory, and not to rest till the final triumph of our righteous case. Expressing the British people's ardent will to-victory, and inspired by the heroic deeds of our Soviet ally, we address ourselves to the Prime Minister with a demand that the second front agreement be carried out with audacity and dispatch. Hitler's desperation is Britain’s opportunity to strike now in the West.” The Minister of Labour, Mr. Ernest Bevin, in a speech in Wales, said: "Those who are fighting for a second front are feeding Hitler and Goebbels. Our friends of the Left who are shouting this slogan are creating a condition we want to avoid by causing division within the country. I believe General .Auchinleck will retrieve the position and hold Egypt Russia might be driven back and lose territory, but I am confident Hitler will not break the Russian armies. No one is a better friend of Russia than I, and I beg those who claim to be her special friends not to try to force a reply on one issue, which might be a great contributing issue but is not the only one. and not the only way to win the war.” The Next Three Months.

The “Daily Mail,” in a leading article, says: “The elamourers for a second front should bear in mind that, whatever plans the Government may have for helping our hard-pressed ally, it is hardly likely to broadcast them to the world at this stage.”

Mr. J. L. Garvin, writing in the “Sunday Express,” says that the crucial question for England and the United States is how to implement in time their pledges to Russia. “- Th? measureless resources of the two nations for 1943 and 1944 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 be followed, at-all costs, by the military organization of a second front somehow, somewhere. “It is a palt’able possibility that the destinies of mankind for centuries to come way be settled within the next three months. Deadly danger menaces Russia. If Russia survived without ’any great Anglo-American attempt to come to her aid, their default would never be forgotten or forgiven.” Mr. Vernon Bartlett, M.P.. said: “We are in such desperate danger of losing the war that anything not affecting the war does not matter. We are in a more serious position than we were after Dunkirk, because today we have not the same stimulus or the same resources.

“Most of the world’s raw materials are row at the disposal of the enemy. We may find in a very few days that the Russians have been pushed back so far that they will not be able to carry out a counter-offensive The feeling of frustrat'on may become very dangerous unless we soon are 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 that a second front, at this stage, would be more of a gamble than a deliberate choice, but that the history of war is full of gambles. If Russia were to collapse the eventual victory of the Allies would be in doubt.