Ashburton Guardian. Magna est Veritas et Prævalebit WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 10, 1941. STRUGGLE FOR LENINGRAD.

Ashburton Guardian, Volume 61, Issue 282, 10 September 1941, Page 4

Ashburton Guardian. Magna est Veritas et Prævalebit WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 10, 1941. STRUGGLE FOR LENINGRAD.

The one sure fact that can be discerned through the smoke of desperate battle that hangs over Leningrad is that the Russians are putting up a defence that dwarfs even their valiant struggle on other sectors of their far* flung line of battle. To "aid the stubborn resistance of the Red Army Marshal Voroshiloff has recruited and organised every able-bodied man and woman in a metropolis containing more than three million inhabitants. The workers in every industry concerned in the production of war material are straining every nerve to maintain the maximum output. The parks, gardens and streets are trench-lined and the people- are prepared to defend their city to the last. The world is enrapt at Russian resolution, Russian determination, Russian doggedness. First they throw in that altar to industry, that symbol and hope of a fuller life —the Dnieper dam. Now they stake their ‘‘city of light,” all the social and cultural advances so painfully made, and the shrine and home of Lenin’s revolution —Leningrad. These imponderable factors must be counted in reckoning Russia’s sacrifice. But Leningrad counts for much in the military and industrial sense as well. Its fall would involve the loss of onesixth of Russian industrial power, much of it vital to the Soviet war machine. Leningrad is, moreover, the military bastion and base of ail North Russia. The remnants of the Soviet naval position in the Baltic and Gulf of Finland would be swept up without its support, leaving Germany in command of an invaluable supply route. Similarly Murmansk would be isolated and Archangel placed under threat. Most serious of all, the loss of Leningrad would subject Moscow to the risk of outflanking from the northwest. This explains why the enemy has made the .city one of his three main obectives. It also explains, in part, why the Russians, soldiers and citizens alike, are inspired with a valour and an impassioned spirit that thrill the world and evoke the acknowledgment, grudging though it be, of their enemy.