ALLIES’ URGENT NEED

Gisborne Herald, Volume LXXI, Issue 21550, 1 November 1944, Page 3

ALLIES’ URGENT NEED

USE OF ANTWERP PORT EAST PRUSSIAN OUTLOOK (Special Correspondent.! (10 a,m.) LONDON, Oct. 31. The Allies need the port of Antwerp to-day perhaps more than ever. Its opening is now at least in sight, says the Daily Telegraph’s military correspondent, Lieut.-General H. G. Ma'rtin. He speculates upon the verdict which the historian will pass on the Allied operations in the west after the initial break-through in Normandy and suggests that the Allies should have gone flat-out for ports suitably placed to serve whatever final offensive or knock-out they had in view. He suggests that the most promising direction was through the open plain of Hanover into the Rhineland and Ruhr so that the real goals were Antwerp, Rotterdam and Amsterdam. Commenting on East Prussia, Lieut.General Martin says that a very big battle remains undecided. There is no likelihood of an early breakthrough and that it would only be by wearing down the opposition that General Chernyakovsky will force the gap of Insterburg. There can be no question that, ultimately, it will be the Germans who will crack and, at this stage, they are in no state to swaD pieces indefinitely on a grand scale.