WAY TO HELP RUSSIA

Evening Post, Volume CXXXII, Issue 43, 19 August 1941, Page 6

WAY TO HELP RUSSIA

While Russia is bearing the whole brunt of the Nazi military machine, extended over a huge front as never before, the possibility of help by Britain and America is limited by the peculiar circumstances of the Russian situation. Germany's Balkan campaign in the spring ousted the Allies from their last foothold in Europe, and the subsequent treaty between Germany and Turkey neutralised the only remaining country which offered a gateway between Britain and Russia in the Middle East. German influence in Iran, strengthened recently by the arrival of many "tourists" from Germany, has closed, for at least the time being, the back door to Russia via the Persian Gulf and tile Caspian Sea. Murmansk., Russia's only icefree port in the Arctic and the chief channel of communication with Russia in the last war, is now masked by the German occupation of Norway and the hostility of Finland with her port of Petsamo, near Murmansk. America may be able to use Vladivostok on the Pacific for sup-, plies to Russia via the Siberian Railway, but that route is far too long to be of much value to Britain. Blocked by sea and land, Britain has one medium left—the air. She is making the fullest use of this to attack Germany from the West with all the weight of bombs that the R.A.F. in its increasing strength can muster.

The outside world, which has not learnt by experience what air warfare means, will be wrong to minimise the effects of the R.A.F.'s intense onslaught, night after night, on targets in Germany, accompanied by day raids over the Lowlands and Northern France, and on Axis shipping and sea and air ports from the North Sea to the Mediterranean. The Germans know I now what an air blitz means, as the reported exodus from places consistently attacked goes to prove. The Russian airmen know, as their |tribute to the R.A.F., sent by cable to "The Times," expresses in glowing terms. Above all is the declaration iof Sir Archibald Sinclair, the Secreitary for Air, to members of the j R.A.F. taking off from an aerodrome j to bomb Germany:

It is the Bombing Command which is going to be the main instrument of victory. ... It is the bombers who are going to smash the war industries of Germany and break the will to win of the German people. . . . The pressure you exert on the economic life of Germany, these attacks on the Ruhr

. . . on the communications between the Ruhr and the East, your thrusts at the military power of Germany, will be a direct relief to Russia in the battle in the East.

Sir Archibald explained how such pressure in the West must draw off German aircraft attacking Russia to defend the Fatherland, and so help Russia to sustain the fight on her own soil. This is the bare truth. There are indications from various sources that German morale from the High Command downwards is affected and that unrest is spreading in Germany. Such a result is not attained without cost. The statement of comparative losses of the R.A.F. and the Luftwaffe makes clear not only the increasing weight of the air attack on Germany but the price that has to be paid for victory.