RENEWED NAZI ASSAULT

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume 77, 20 October 1942, Page 2

RENEWED NAZI ASSAULT

Upper Hand in Stalingrad Area MERCILESS AND PERSISTENT BOMBING

(Rec. 1.20 p.m.) London, Oct. 19. Reports from Moscow to-day suggest that the Germans have the upper hand in the Stalingrad area, at least temporarily, although costly fighting is ahead before the German army can make good l litler’s boast that Stalingrad will be taken. 1 he renewed German assault against north Stalingrad is now in its sixth day. In it the Russians have suffered what the Moscow correspondent of I lie I imes describes as the most merciless and persistent air bombing the war has known. The Luftwaffe without interruption is attacking a narrow sector, using 500 planes of all types and making at least I 000 sorties daily and sometimes I 600.

Reports from Berlin say that the Russians are massing for a renewed drive between the Don and the Volga northwest of Stalingrad where Russian troops, tanks and artillery are continBerlin also is’continually emphasising the major dimensions of the Russian movements in the Toropets area The Luftwaffe for a fortnight maintained round-the-clock attacks against Russian troops deployments on the whole region between Toropets ana Kalinin, where a large-scale Russian offensive can be expected. HEAVY ENEMY LOSSES The Germans in capturing one block of buildings in Stalingrad lost 46 tanks and about 5000 killed in 24 hours, says Reuter’s Moscow correspondent. The Russians’ slender bridge across her confidence was justified, for she was soon promoted to the managing editorship of the magazine. In 1911, two years after she had been separated from her husband, she published her first book—and fired her first shot against the “society life” she had known on the inside since girlhood. Called “Stuffed Shirts,” it was stuffed with divorcees, dowagers and social climbers, and with sly. cynical digs at the whole society set-up. It created little interest, and its author, rather discouraged, turned to writing plays. She had three done before she offered any to a publisher. The. first to be produced on Broadway was a spectacular failure; the second, The Women, was an even more spectacular success. The inspiration for this ruthless lampooning of her own sex came to her one night in the powder room of a fashionable New York night club. Listening-in to the gossip being purred out all round her, she decided that this sort of thing was “really Loo gruesome,” and to the impatient Mr Luce, who was pacing up and down outside, she announced that she meant “to do something about

the Volga at Stalingrad was purposely built narrow to reduce the target. The bridge was hit only twice and repaired in a lew hours. The bridge passes a two-way single file of traffic. According to Moscow radio Finland has lost 300,000 men in the Russian war. The radio added that the Finns asserted they were fighting their own war. but they were continuing fighting with the Germans on the Don banks and in the Caucasus. The Berlin international news bureau, dwelling on the deterioration of the weather on the Russian front, said: “Cold rain has swept over Stalingrad, and wintry conditions on the central front are preventing large-scale movement. Over 2580 trains carrying 1.162,000 tons of winter equipment, including skis, arrived in Russia for the German army.”—P.A. age and incite so-called democratic principles throughout the world.” In the following year the Luces went to China, and Clare Booth went a stage further on her career as a war correspondent. She covered a Japanese bombing of Chungking, she inspected the Yellow River front, she met Generalissimo and Madame Chiang Kai-shek; and she wrote admirable articles about it all. Her next assignment was to the Philippines, where she wrote a close-up on General MacArthur, and when America had been in the war for two months she flew to India and Burma. She made a trip to bombed-out Mandalay; she had more than one taste of bombing at the United States forces Maymyo headquarters. She interviewed Generals Stilwell and Brereton; she visited Chennault’s heroic little band of airmen—the since-disbanded American Volunteer Group—who were protecting the Burma road from their Toungoo headquarters. And on the way home to America she looked in on the Middle East battle zone. Out of it all Clare Booth, journalist or not, wrote a series of first-rate articles, mnrp serious in vein than

sue meant io do something about it ” Within a week she had; The Women had been written, with not one likeable character in its all-fe-minine cast of forty. (For the only one who was not a cat—or worse—was a fool.) The idea of her second stage success, Kiss the Boys Good-Bye, was born in Charleston, South Carolina, where her husband has a 7000-acre plantation. Margin For Error was her third big Broadway success; but while it was playing to packed houses its author was still protesting that she really knew very little about play writing and less about humour. What she thought were her best lines always fell fiat, she noted sadly. EUROPE IN THE SPRING A few months after the outbreak ot war the Luces went to Europe. That trip was the start of Clare Booth’s career as a war correspondent. She went, as she tells in the book that she wrote on her return to America, as a journalist because she had to produce some “business reason” for going, and the United States State department would have been unimpressed by the real purpose [ of her visit—to find out, for the sake ; of her own peace of mind, whether - the war was or was not America’s business. Though she was in Italy, ; France and England all the months : of March, April and May she did not J write a single word—at the timeThat was partly because she quickly found out that she could not get the 1 truth, as she saw it, past the censors, : partly because what she decided to be true one day seemed to be untrue the next, but most of all, she insists, because she was not really a journalist. “I tried very often, but I just wasn’t interested in writing ‘news,’ ” she says. “I was interested lar less in events themselves than in the effect they had on people’s hearts and minds.” All the same that trip was the beginning of her career as a “Life” where she talked for two hours with; war correspondent. From Italy,; the smooth and evasive Count Ciano. I she went to France, where she talk- j ed with politicians and shopgirls, I and taxi drivers and with soldiers) in the Maginot line. She saw the first Nazi bombs fall on Brussels, and the opening chapters of the tragic battle for France. She was in England during the tense days of Dunkirk, and then she went back to America satisfied because she had found out what she had gone to find out—that this war was America’s business after all, that when the Declaration of Independence said, “Liberty and justice for all.” it did not mean merely for United States citizens. Henry R. Luce also returned from Europe convinced that the war was America’s business. In the Presidential election he had been proWillkie; now he announced that he would support Roosevelt’s foreign policy up to the hilt. And he proceeded to do so with a full length ! propaganda film about the American Expeditionary Force in World War 1., a nation-wide broadcast, and a booklet. “American Century,” which republished an editorial he had written for “Life” on his return. In this he wrote, many months before Pearl Harbour, “America is in the war. . .' We are not in a war to defend American territory. We are in a war to defend and even to promote, encour- 1

articles, more serious in vein than her often sardonic, often caustic and always entertaining “Europe in the Spring.” but with the emphasis still on people rather than on events, and all the more readable on that account. ‘ Last week the editors of “Life” raised a storm by publishing an open letter to Britain demanding that she “quit fighting to hold the Empire together; because if you cling to the Empire at the expense of United Nations you will lose.” Later Mr Luce expressed deep regret that the words in the editorial had been misunderstood. There was no intention of advocating the breaking-up of the British Commonwealth but they wanted to see greater unity of purpose between U.S.A. and Britain.