“FIVE MINUTES TO MIDNIGHT”

Dominion, Volume 35, Issue 264, 6 August 1942, Page 5

“FIVE MINUTES TO MIDNIGHT”

Sands Running Out ACTION OR DEFEAT AS ALTERNATIVES Significance Of Caucasus (By Telegraph.—Press Assu.—Copyright.) (Received August 5, 7 pan.) NEW YORK, August 4. Mr. Leland Stowe, of the “Chicago Daily News” foreign service, in a radio dispatch from Moscow, says: “It is time to face the facts. The hour-glass for the Anglo-American democracies is running lower than at any other time since the Declaration of Independence. The United States and Britain are in danger of losing this war, and they can lose it in the next 40 days unless the AngloAmerican armed forces do something about it. “Germany’s offensive needs only to smash onward at the pace that was maintained in July for another 40 days and the Nazis will have conquered all tlie Northern Caucasus and seized the priceless Russian oilfields aud refineries at Grozny and Baku. Such oil alone might enable Hitler to win tbe war, and it is therefore the plainest statement of physical fact that the future existence of the AngloAmerican democracies depends upon Germany’s defeat in the Caucasus. “If the Caucasus falls every AngloAmerican front or stronghold in the Middle East, Africa, India, and the Far East falls with it. If there is no second front in Western Europe this month and the Caucasus is conquered in mid-September, Turkey will almost certainly throw in her lot with the Nazis. Strong pro-Germarf elements in Persia will be completely unleashed and it will then be impossible to hold Persia for long. If the Caucasus falls India’s isolation will be virtually assured, and it would be the signal for Japan to invade. “It is not yet too late, but it is five minutes to midnight. If midnight strikes without Anglo-American intervention in Europe there will be no excuse for American correspondents remaining in Russia; they will be needed at home to fight on a third front.”