SECOND FRONT PROBLEM

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

SECOND FRONT PROBLEM

(Rec. 11 a.m.) WASHINGTON, Oct. 6 President Roosevelt withheld comment on M. Stalin's statement requesting the Allies to "fulfil their obligations on time". He said that Admiral Standley, the United States Anibassador in Moscow, who is to visit America soon, would return to Russia immediately after reporting. Regarding the dispatches reporting Mr Wendell Willkie urging a second front in Europe, Mr Roosevelt said he ftad not read them, and he considered they were not worth reading because they were purely speculative. The New York Herald-Tribune's Washington correspondent says that M. Stalin's appeal was believed to have been the subject of a conference between President Roosevelt and his three chief military adviseVs, Admiral Leahy, General Marshall, and Admiral King. M. Litvinov, the Soviet Ambassador, conferred with Mr Welles (Under-Secretary of State) but he told the Press that the second front was.not discussed. KNOCK-OUT PUNCHES.

"We are ready to deliver some knock-out punches, if I can believe my own eyes," said Mr Wendell Willkie in a statement after having his fourth conference with Marshal Chiang Kai-shek, reports a Chungking cable.

He added: "In my personal opinion the time has come for an all-out armed offensive everywhere." He pointed out that his travels have covered 13 kingdoms and Governments, and ho said he found. four things common to all:—■

"(1) A desire to win. "(2) They want an offensive now. "(3) They want independence after tho war.

"(4) They want a clear-cut renunciation of any Imperialistic designs by the Western nations in Asia. In varying degrees the people of all 13 countries doubt the dependability and readiness of the leading Democracies to insist on the freedom of others after the war, and this doubt militates against enthusiastic war cooperation." MR WILLKIE'S REJOINDER. "I'll say what I damn well please," Mr 'Willkie told the Press when informed of President Roosevelt's Press conference comment on Press despatches that Mr Willkie's second front urgings wore not worth reading because they were purely speculative. He added: "In all my public statements I am speaking only for myself. I am here as an individual, for whom for some sane reason 23,000,000 Amerisons voted."