WHAT IS INVOLVED

Manawatu Standard, Volume LXII, Issue 265, 8 October 1942, Page 5

WHAT IS INVOLVED

NAZI-RUSSIAN STRUGGLE

ISSUE HANGS IN BALANCE (N.Z. Press Association—Copyright.) (11.15 a.m.) LONDON, Oct. 7.

That the Red Army's continuing resistance at Stalingrad must not obscure the far-reaching gravity of the Russian situation is emphasised by correspondents in Russia, reporting the lively discussion which M. Stalin's latest second front pronouncement has aroused.

The Stalingrad battle, says Reuter's correspondent at Kuibyshev, has long ceased to he a struggle f.or a limited, though vital, territorial objective ; it is a large scale grapple between important parts of the German and Russian armies for the destruction of one or the other, with the chances of victory and survival about equal and the issue hanging precariously in the balance. It is emphasised in the discussions hy diplomats of M. Stalin's second front statement that the Russian view is that an emergency has arisen de'manding immediate Allied action, regardless of what was previously agreed upon. Reliable information in Kuibyshev says that even the Dieppe raid resulted in the immediate dispatch to France of a number of new German divisions, and the feeling in Kuibvshev undoubtedly is that it is the Allies' duty to find means _ of drawing off another 30 to 40 divisions.