Wairarapa Times-Age WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 29, 1941. DARK DAYS IN RUSSIA.

Wairarapa Times-Age, 29 October 1941, Page 4

Wairarapa Times-Age WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 29, 1941. DARK DAYS IN RUSSIA.

TT has been claimed fairly that much of the territory occupied by the Germans since they invaded Russia a little over lour months ago is, from a military standpoint, of secondary importance, and that the lengthening of enemy communications has been a material .factor to set against this loss. No such comfortable view can .be taken, however, of the advance through the Ukraine in which the Germans have smashed their way almost to the gates of Rostov. With the battle for Moscow raging still in full fury and at an indecisive stage, a cablegram yesterday stated that:

The most dangerous Axis effort at present is against Rostov, where both sides are hurrying up reinforcements and a firstclass battle is expected before long in and behind the town, unless Marshal Timoshenko manages to permanently halt the enemy a respectable distance away from it.

Detailed news shows that hopes of halting the enemy, in his present thrust at all events, a respectable distance away from Rostov, have already vanished. Fighting, as reports stand at time of ■writing, is proceeding within TO or 15 miles ol this vital centre of Soviet communications, and in the air above it.

So far as the Nazi drive across the Ukraine, into the heart of the Donetz basin (in which is concentrated a very large part of Russia’s most vital war production), and now to the near neighbourhood of Rostov, is concerned, there can be no question of cheerful theorising about the enemy being lured and led on to his undoing. Nothing is more certain than that virtually every yard of this valuable territory "would have been defended and held had the Russians been equal to the effort entailed. Magnificently as they have fought and are fighting, the Russians ■were not equal to that effort. They have been forced back by an enemy able for the time being to throw into battle greater masses of men, and still more of tanks and other mechanised equipment. To their relative lack of equipment the Russians unhappily owe their loss of the area on "which, had they retained it, ‘they -would have relied primarily in making good their deficiencies of equipment.

Much more than this turns, however, on the fate of the drive in which the enemy has now reached, or closely approached, Rostov. The Axis forces are striking not only at the most highly-developed and productive centres of Russian war industry, but at the oil lines from the Caucasus into the interior of Russia, the routes by which British and American material is reaching Russia through Iran, and the link between the Russian southern armies and the British forces in the Middle East.

With Rostov in Russian hands and held by a safe margin, the transmission of Caucasian oil would proceed uninterrupted and a broad avenue of communication between Russia and her Allies would remain open. With Rostov lost to the enemy, even if the latter were not then able to extend his thrust to the Caspian Sea, the transport of oil and contact between the Russian and British armies at best would be severely restricted. As the editor of the London “Observer,” Mr J. L. Garvin, observed in an impressive article quoted extensively in one of yesterday’s cablegrams, the bearing of these events in South Russia on the whole position of the British Empire in the Middle East —for one thing because of the threat to the new lifeline of communication between Britain and Russia through Tran —may become direct and momentous, and: “A common battlefront with our allies may have to come.”

The suggestion is already advanced by another British newspaper, the “Daily Sketch,” that the second front for which There have been clamorous demands in Britain will be established by a movement of British and Dominion troops into the Caucasus, there to co-operate directly with the Russians. Although it is accompanied by references to supposed plans of the British War Cabinet, this is not official news.

What Britain is now able to do and intends to do has yet to be made known authoritatively. It stands out clearly enough, however, that Britain is called upon to make the most of any opportunity for effective action that exists. The position to be faced in Southern Russia is that the enemy is well advanced in an effort, not only to complete the conquest of the Ukraine and cut off Russia’s principal oil supplies, but to establish a barrier between the Russian armies and those of the British Empire in the Middle East. Whatever can be done at all hopefully to counter the enemy’s total design evidently will be well worth while.