TAKING NO CHANCES

Wairarapa Times-Age, 17 March 1942, Page 4

TAKING NO CHANCES

SOVIET IN FAR EAST DEFENCES BEING PERFECTED. AGAINST POSSIBLE JAPANESE ATTACK. (By Telegraph—Press Association—Copyright) LONDON, March 16. Russia is perfecting her Far Eastern defences, some details of which are being allowed to leak cut to coincide with the arrival in Moscow of the, new Japanese Ambassador, Mr Sato, says the “Daily Mail's” Stockholm, correspondent. The replacement of LieutenantGeneral Tatekawa as Ambassador is interpreted as indicating that the policy of Tokio toward Moscow is swiftly changing. The Kremlin, says the correspondent, is taking no chances of Sato “doing a Kurusu” on Russia. Russia is taking no risk of a repetition of Pearl Harbour, and battle orders which are instantly operable have been issued to Vladivostok and also to Nikolaevsk naval base, opposite Sakhalin Island. The coast between Vladivostok and Nikolaevsk has beep mined. Tire police are rounding up a widespread espionage ring in the Far East. The anti-aircraft defences have been strengthened and the numbers of aerodromes and fighter squadrons multiplied. Frequent reconnaissances are being made over the Gulf of Tartary, and these have revealed that hundreds of Japanese fishermen are within Russian territorial waters. REPORTED ARMY STRENGTHS. The political situation between Russia and Japan is causing the Kremlin some concern, because it is realised that it resembles the situation between Russia and Germany before Germany invaded Russia. The Swedish Press in the weekend stated that the Japanese army in Manchukuo has been raised to more than 1,000,000 men, which is treble the total in 1940. Russian authorities in Stockholm laugh at the suggestion that even 1,000,000 men would constitute a serious menace to the independent Far Eastern Russian Army, which normally totals 1,500,000. Military quarters believe that the Russian forces are now nearer to comprising 3,000,000 front-line troops, with huge reserves being trained. No troops or aircraft have been transferred from the East.

FORMATION OF HUGE RESERVE. The Commander-in-Chief in Kharbarovsk is General Gregory Stern. The whole army is manning the RussianManchukuoan frontier, and it is stronger and better equipped than in the days of its creator, Marshal Blucher, who is reported to be at present training a central Asiatic Army.

M. Stalin has ordered the formation of a huge Far Eastern force comparable with the armies which are facing Germany, and the manpower is being drawn from the great new industrial towns to the east of the Urals, while the Far Eastern munitions are also drawn from the towns east of the Urals making the army independent of the western front. Thousands of Russians are labouring night , and day trebling the track of the Trans-Siberian Railway to carry war materials to the Far East, and as this line runs parallel with the Amur River frontier the Russians are concentrating on a second. Trans-Siberian railway running to Komsomolsk, on the Amur to the south of Nikolaevsk. Fleets of fat flatbottomed moter tor-pedo-boats are making an appearance on the shallow island-studded Amur. The construction of a chain, of aerodromes linking the Kamchatka Peninsula with Alaska via the Aleutians is proceeding rapidly, and the Russians expect the early delivery of American planes via this route. Another source of Japanese anxiety is an improvement by the Russians of the communications between the war industries east of the Urals and Urumchi, in Sinkiang Province (western China) and also with Lanchoo and Chungking, which will possibly be valuable supplementing routes for the transport of supplies to China.