“OUR CAUSE JUST”

Wairarapa Times-Age, 4 July 1941, Page 5

“OUR CAUSE JUST”

STALIN’S CALL ON PEOPLE OF RUSSIA DEMAND FOR UNLIMITED EFFORT. CONFIDENCE THAT NAZIS | WILL BE DEFEATED. (By Telegraph—Press Association—Copyright ) MOSCOW. July 3. "Hitler’s armies will be beaten, like Napoleon’s,” declared M. Stalin in a broadcast from all Soviet stations. M. Stalin said. “The enemy, in spite of the heroic resistance by our army and the destruction of the enemy’s best forces, has continued to push on and has occupied Lithuania, the greater part of Latvia, the western part of White Russia and part of the western Ukraine.” Referring to the Soviet union's past relations with the Nazi Government, he said: "It might be asked why Soviet Russia concluded a non-aggression pact of peace with a neighbouring power We could not refuse such a pact, even to such monsters as Hitler and Ribbentrop. Our cause is just, and the enemy will be defeated.” M. Stalin referred to the Germanisation and enslavement threatening the Lithuanian, Latvian and Estonian peoples, and he added that the question for the Soviet Union was whether Russia would be similarly enslaved. “Everything." he said:" “must be subordinated to the task of crushing the enemy. This is a war for the liberation of all the peoples who have been enslaved by Germany and also of the German people.” He concluded by appealing to everyone to support, the Red Army and Navy “for our victory." While the Soviet leader spoke the greatest battle of the war so far was raging. The main German attack is in the Minsk sector in the triangle of Borisov, Bobruisk and Sluisk. which is 60 miles west of Bobruisk. A late report from Moscow states that the Germans have made a new thrust southward of Kiev. The attack was held throughout the night. NOTHING TO BE LEFT. M. Stalin was speaking for the first time as president of the Defence Council of the Soviet Union. During the withdrawal all valuable materia! must be resolutely destroyed, he said. Not a single railway engine or coach, not a single gallon of oil and not a single pound of wheat must be left. The farmers must take away all their chattels and place their grain in the care of the State organisation to be transported to the rear. In the areas occupied by the Germans all possible measures must be taken to frustrate their efforts. Rear detachments must, be created as well as croups of saboteurs to fight against the enemy, blow up bridges and roads, set fire to forests and cut telephone wires. i In the Soviet rear vast efforts of organisation were necessary. The nation must organise assistance to the Red Army in all fields, including the tank and aircraft production and the transport services. The Soviet was fighting an army with an abundance of these arms. M. Stalin argued that the German occupation of part of the Russian territory was chiefly due to the conditions under which the war began. While the German divisions stood on the frontiers awaiting the signal. Russians had to be mobilised and moved up to the frontier. Russia was a 'peace loving country, and .not wishing to take .the initiative in violating the nonaggression pact, she could not adopt a path of perfidy.

GERMANY EXPOSED. Germany, by tearing up the pact, secured for her troops a short period of advantage, but she lost from a political viewpoint through being unmasked in the eyes of the whole world as a bloodthirsty aggressor. Russia, as a result of the war imposed upon her, had entered upon a struggle to the death with her most perfidious enemy—German Fascism. M. Stalin added: “The main forces of the Red Army, with thousands of tanks and planes, are entering into action.’ The enemy, he continued, intended to seize the Soviet peoples wheat and oil. restore the big landowners, restore Tzarism, destroy the culture of the fre« 'peoples of the Soviet Union, and Ger'manise and enslave them. It was. therefore, a Question of life and death 1 for the Soviet Union. The Red Army. ;Navy and citizens must fight to their ! last drop of blood. , Russia’s war was the same as that of the people of Europe and the United States, M. Stalin added. That was the meaning of the historic speech in which Mr Winston Churchill had promised aid to Russia, and of the United States’ pledge of assistance. M. Stalin promised his listeners that Hitler’s armies would be defeated, as were those of Napoleon and Kaiser Wilhelm.