Late News RING CLOSING ON ORAN

Dominion, Volume 36, Issue 39, 10 November 1942, Page 5

Late News RING CLOSING ON ORAN

Prices And Risks In The Offensive NEW PERSPECTIVE (By Telegraph,—Press Assn.—Copyright.) LONDON, November 9. Reuter reports that the Oran naval base is now practically cut off. Road and rail communication between Oran and Algiers hash een severad. The La Senia airport at Oran is still in Vichy hands. Vichy radio says that resistance at Arzen and Oran is continuing. “The United Nations have passed to the strategic offensive for the first time in the whole three.years of the war,” says the New York “Herald Tribune.” “The skilfully-designed offensive is reaping all the advantages of the initiative,’ which the Axis so long enjoyed. It will never falter or turn back till it ends in the streets of Berlin. “The landing in Africa is only the beginning, and many hard and bloody battles undoubtedly lie ahead, but America,: 24 years after the guns fell silent on the Western Front, is again in a European war in major force, and that fact alone will shake the Axis structure through every part.” The “New York Times” warns, that the American landings involve large risks as well as enormous opportunities. “The hitherto immobilized French land and naval forces may enter the war, and the Axis will attack our convoys with all the air and sea power it can get into the Mediterranean, but no great operation can be undertaken without risks,” the paper says. “This is a great operation, boldly conceived, and if it is successful it can change overnight the whole aspect of the war. Russian Hopes.

“In France and the occupied countries the landings will have profound repercussions. Our Russian allies, who have-fought superbly and almost alone, now see in the are reaching from •North Africa to southern Europe the shape of the second front they have urged us to establish.” Moscow radio many times broadcast the news and expressed the hope that the operations would lead to the opening of a second front. “Pravda,” which is the only newspaper publishing in Moscow today, prominently displayed the news of the new Allied operations. Addressing the Congress of Ameri-can-i Soviet Friendship today, the VicePresident, Mr. Henry Wallace, said that President Roosevelt told the arm;,, navy, and all other war agencies that help to Russia came first up to the limit of the available shipping space, and the American people fully supported, the President’s decision to give Russia the first priority. The American landings in North Africa*would open a side-door to Germany. Conquest of the Mediterranean would strengthen the supply route to Russia. It is pointed out in London that the United States has never recognised the French protectorate over Morocco, and therefore America alone possesses the right to appeal, to the Sultan of Morocco not to impede the Allied operations. The Sultan is widely believed to be sympathetic towards the Allies. In addition to the warships based at Toulon, as cabled earlier, the French naval forces include the battleship Richelieu and three cruisers at Dakar and the battleship Jean Bart at Casablanca. . .. General Eisenhower signed the armistice at Algiers for the United States, and General Voeldz, commander of the 19th French Army Corps for France. British and American naval forces entered Algiers harbour this morning, after wliicli American infaiitry reinforcements and R.A.F. personnel landed.