REFERENCES TO ALLIES

Otago Daily Times, Issue 25215, 3 May 1943, Page 3

REFERENCES TO ALLIES

A MORE CORDIAL TONE (Rec. 10 p.m.) LONDON, May 2. British correspondents in Moscow report that the cordial references to the Allies in M. Stalin’s May Day order made a markedly favourable impression on the Russians. The Sunday papers emphasise that M. Stalin shrewdly countered Dr Goebbels’s propaganda seeking to extend the split between Russia and Poland to other Allies.

The Observer’s commentator says:— “M. Stalin’s tone towards the United Nations was warmer than it has ever been. The Polish incident takes its place as a regrettable, but small and local, and, we hope, temporary breach in the vast front united against the Axis.”

General Giraud, in a May Day broadcast over the Algiers radio, said: “ The sombre days of 1940, when we suffered defeat, are still present in Frenchmen’s memories. Many reasons caused the defeat, but it is certain that a bad distribution of labour put us in such an inferior position that the courage of our soldiers alone was insufficient to achieve victory. A coalition of interests which lacked generosity and the spirit of self-sacrifice robbed the nation of the power of co-ordinating its assets. The veritable disruption wljich France suffered was the root of disorder. Impotent France to-morrow must be free, in accordance with the aims she has set herself. French youth will have a difficult task in assuring France’s continued life. Victory in Tunisia is near. Then we shall be ready for a new start.”

The Russians are receiving two days’ holiday for May Day, says the Moscow correspondent of the British United Press. Moscow’s walls are draped with red banners bearing slogans and thousands of huge likenesses of Stalin and other national leaders, giving the city the appearance of a huge picture gallery. Hundreds of small red flags flutter from windows and the tops of buses and trams. Only the traditional parade across the Red Square, in which the might of the Red Army and Air Force was formerly demonstrated, is missing from the celebrations. Security forbids such concentrations while the enemy is still only a few score miles distant. Dr Seyss Inquart, the German Commissioner. postponed the May Day meetings in Holland on the pretext that May Day is a normal working day. Dr Ley’s May Day address to the German workers was to a marked degree defensive in tone and merely emphasised that Germany has sufficient men. raw materials, arms, and ammunition to defy all assaults from the east and \yest.