NEARER SMOLENSK

Grey River Argus, 18 July 1941, Page 5

NEARER SMOLENSK

Heavy Northerly Fighting Also MOSCOW CONFIDENCE. EVACUATION~EASED UP. LAus. & N.Z. Cable Assn.] (Rec. 11.5). LONDON. July 17. The Moscow correspondent of the Associated Press of Great Britain says: “The general atmosphere is one of growing confidence in Moscow. The evacuation of women and childres from Moscow has been slackened. Workmen have been brought bac<; to peace-time jobs. LONDON ESTIMATES. LONDON, July 16.. In the Russo-German war on Tuesday, the heaviest fighting was in three zones—in the north-west, where the German objective is Leningrad; in the west (Vitebsk) sector), where the objective is Moscow; and in the south-west, where the Ukraine is the objective In the' Vitebsk sector, where the Germans are trying to develop me northern arm of a pincers movement on Smolensk, across battlefields heaped with dead, and the blackened ruins of countless machines, the Russians are vigorously maintaining their counter-attacks on the outermost defence rings of Leningrad and Moscow. Competent military observers in London believe tl«at tfie Germans, after nearly four weeks’ fighting on the Eastern Front, have achieved nothing that can be reckoned as final, op even of substantial advantage. Ihe observers add that unless the Germans can go considerably further, their onslaught will not be worth the expenditure in men and machines they have made. “It is only fair to sav there is deep admiration here for the Russians in the fight they have already put up,” says one observer. German propagandists . continue hourly to annihilate the Soviet armed forces with colourful but vague, stories, which might almost be duplicates of those distributed last week, or earlier. I