Wairarapa Times-Age MONDAY, AUGUST 17, 1942. CRITICAL DAYS OF WAR.

Wairarapa Times-Age, 17 August 1942, Page 2

Wairarapa Times-Age MONDAY, AUGUST 17, 1942. CRITICAL DAYS OF WAR.

JJAST Thursday the British Minister of Production (l\lr Oliver Lyttelton) said there was every sign of the terrible symphony of the war rising to a crescendo before the winter, and that he saw no reason to alter the opinion he had expressed three weeks earlier that the ensuing eighty days (a period of which about two-thirds still remains in prospect) would be the most critical in history. It is sufficiently evident that, from the Allied standpoint, critical days, as Mr Lyttelton observed, are still to come. To that it may be added, however, that there is much to'suggest that for the gangster dictatorships the outlook must be very much more alarming than it is for the free nations they are seeking to overthrow.

The United Nations are fighting in a spirit of grim resolution which assuredly will not be weakened even if further defeats and setbacks should lengthen out the war. The only alternatives for these nations, as the United States Undersecretary for War (Mr Patterson) said the other day, are victory or death. Nazi Germany and her accomplices, on the other hand, are gambling desperately in the knowledge that unless they can achieve an overwhelming measure of success in the next month or two, they will be headed visibly and inevitably for defeat.

At a number of points, notably in the war at sea and in the development of concentrated air attacks on Germany and enemy-occupied territory, the power of the United Nations is much more than beginning to make itself felt. The outlook at an immediate view is much less favourable in Russia and in North Africa and there are great dangers yet to be overcome in the Pacific, though the outlook on this side of the world is brightened appreciably by the Allied offensive in the Solomon Islands area and the recent effective and damaging bombardment by American naval forces of the principal Japanese base in the Aleutian Islands.

Even in this country, with our near and keen interest in the grim struggle that is in progress in the Solomon Islands and adjacent, areas, much thought and attention centre at present on Russia. A stage evidently has been reached at which any considerable enlargement of the measure of success the Germans have gained in their thrust into the Northern Caucasus might terribly weaken Russia and lengthen out the war. Whether the Germans are likely to achieve the results at which they are aiming—results which would justify in their eyes the prodigal expenditure of lives and material they have made in the last ten weeks —is still however at least an open question.

As matters stand, the enemy has made gains in the Northern Caucasus which are important in themselves and open up the possibly of flanking attacks on the great mountain barrier. During many weeks in which they have made the greatest military efforts of which they were capable, however, the Germans have made no progress at Voronezh and very little progress on the approaches to Stalingrad. In new and formidable efforts north-west of Stalingrad, according to the latest news in hand at time of writing, the enemy achieved only a limited advance.

It is now self-evident that in this year’s campaign in South Russia Marshal Timoshenko was unable to assemble forces capable of withstanding the enemy at all points, but it remains possible that the defence of the areas in which the enemy has been repelled—areas in which the Germans have striven in vain to broaden and extend their attacking front—may determine the outcome of the campaign as a whole. In May last, Stalin said that it was beyond doubt that Germany and her army had become weaker than they were ten months earlier (when they first attacked Russia) and that during the same period the Russian Army had become better organised and stronger than it was at the beginning of the war. It has yet to be shown that these claims were not justified. If they were justified, great changes may be witnessed on the. Eastern front before the northern winter descends.