DRIVE TO WHITE SEA

Evening Post, Volume CXXXIII, Issue 111, 13 May 1942, Page 5

DRIVE TO WHITE SEA

ENEMY PLAN SUSPECTED

LONDON, May 12,

A Finnish "communique reports livelier artillery activity in the Karelian Isthmus.

According to the Stockholm correspondent of "The Times," there are no large-scale operations on the Svir front, but movements further north are becoming interesting and can be interpreted as preliminaries to a serious new German-Finnish drive to the White Sea to cut railway communications between Murmansk and Archangel and establish a submarine base to range Archangel's approaches.

Berlin war specialists appear to believe that Archangel can be effectively blockaded by submarines. Thus the supply route to Russia would be made impracticable if the enemy captured a stretch of the western shore of the White Sea. The Russians appear to be fully alive to this menace.

The Stockholm correspondent of the "Daily Telegraph" reports tfiat the German Press, in announcing the first outcome of the meeting at Salzburg between Hitler and Mussolini, states that Mussolini has agreed to send several more divisions, totalling 100,000 men, to the Russian front.

The German Press, this correspondent says, mentions the presence of representatives of the Ukrainian peoples' volunteer army at the ceremony at Mariupol, which suggests that the Nazis have newly-formed Ukrainian units, besides Rumanians, Hungarians, and quislings from France and Norway for the coming drive to the Caucasus; but, he states, it is doubtful whether the Ukrainians merit the description of an army.