SLOWER DRIVE

Dominion, Volume 35, Issue 250, 21 July 1942, Page 5

SLOWER DRIVE

Resistance In Plain

LONDON, July 19. Commentators in Moscow still describe the situation as critical. The Stockholm correspondent of “The Times” says: ‘Though the operations on the Donetz front have slowed somewhat, it is dangerous to magnify the significance of this, because the Germans have captured large territory and they would need time for arranging. for supplies. It can safely be said, however, that the expenditure for gains so far has exceeded the German estimates, and the progress w more difficult than was expected after the break-through Into the plain beyond the Voronezh-Rostov railway. “Marshal Timoshenko’s army still stands as an unshuttered fighting force, and Field Marshal von Bock’s initial impetus has already largely been expended without having achieved the large encirclement and annihilations that were so confidently promised. A Berlin spokesman today asserted that the Germans’ military object is not so much to destroy the Red Armies as to deprive them of territory, thereby paralysing them.”