BATTLE OF OIL

Dominion, Volume 35, Issue 285, 1 September 1942, Page 5

BATTLE OF OIL

Russians’ Dramatic Efforts

(Received August 31, 9.30 p.m.) LONDON, August 30.

Reuter’s correspondent “somewhere on the Volga” describes a second Battle of the Volga that is going on only a few miles from the front—a battle to keep open the Volga supply line in defiance of the Luftwaffe. Great tanker-barges loaded to the gunwales, he says, are fighting their way upstream, reinforced by everything that will float, including very small passenger steamers and ferries towing lighters and also rafts, some of which are 200 feet long, composed of giant logs lashed, spiked, and chained together and steered by giant sweeps.

Many women are manning the vessels and rafts, with which the Russians are moving the greatest possible amount of oil and grain from the threatened regions. The oil workers of Baku are straining every nerve to increase the output, while intense activity is going on in the steppes east of the Volga and north on the Caspian, known as the “Second Baku.” Many new wells have also begun to flow in the past few months in Buguruslan, which is east of Kuibyshev, and also in the Bashkir and north Kazakhstan.

The Soviet Oil Commissar, M. Sediu, says that war needs can be met from the eastern regions provided that the “Second Baku” maintains its output.

STATE OF EMERGENCY Reported In Persia (Received August 31, 11.45 p.m.) LONDON, August 30. Berne radio reports that a state of emergency has been declared throughout Persia, which lies immediately south of the Russian Caucasus.