POUNDING CONTINUES

Wairarapa Times-Age, 12 February 1940, Page 5

POUNDING CONTINUES

NOT A YARD YIELDED BY FINNS TANKS TAKEN AND PLANES SHOT DOWN. VIOLENT FIGHTING ON ISTHMUS. By Telegraph—Press Association—Copyright. HELSINKI, February 10. The Russians continue to pound the line from the Gulf of Finland to Lake Ladoga, but the Finns claim not to have yielded a yard. A Finnish war communique states: “The Soviet maintained the offensive for the ninth successive day without success. The Finns captured 32 tanks and shot down four enemy planes. "The Karelian Isthmus is the scene of violent fighting. Heavy artillery and tanks supported massed Red infantry attacks against Hie Mannerheim Line, but were thrown back with heavy losses. The Russians lost another 800 men north-east of Lake Ladoga. . “The enemy pressure is heaviest on the Summa sector .of the Mannerheim Line, but all attacks have been repulsed, while the enemy has lost about 800 killed besides a column of 60 lorries and. two tanks. The commander of the 11th Russian Division, Colonel Borisov, was killed. "Weak efforts by the enemy at Suomussalmi were repulsed, and the enemy lost four planes there." Reports from Stockholm indicate that the Russians are making a tremendous effort to break through the Mannerheim Line. The attack is going on right across the isthmus and an effort is being made to prevent the Finns from getting reinforcements. The Finns have been standing firm, but the intensity of the attack is placing a severe strain on their reserves. In the north the Finns have advanced and have recaptured the nickel mining town which the Russians captured earlier in the war SOVIET DENOUNCED ADDRESS BY PRESIDENT ROOSEVELT. DESIRE TO AID FINLAND. NEW YORK. February 11. President Roosevelt, addressing the American Youth Congress, said: “Russia has a dictatorship as absolute as any other in the world. The United States’ sympathy is 98 per cent with Finland.” He said that the United States desires to aid Finland. He ridiculed suggestions that Russia might declare war' on the United States in consequence of this and described his own early interest in the Russian experiment in the hope that it would lead to the betterment of the nation. Mr Roosevelt added: “That hope today is either shattered or put into storage against a better day. Russia is allied with another dictatorship and has invaded a neighbour so infinitesimally small that it could not injure the Soviet.” The President's remarks were particularly pointed since the organisation is filled with controversy concerning its refusal to denounce lhe Russian invasion of Finland and charges that its council is Communistically influenced.

The Washington correspondent of the “New York Times” says that a rising trend of Russian imports from the United States since the Finnish war began is revealed in an analysis of the trade figures for December They were valued at 15.000,000 dollars —more than the quarter total in 19.39, in which the adverse Russian trade balance was 4.3.000.000 dollars. The accelerated purchases in 1940 are mainly for machinery and manufactured aeroplanes.