LENINGRAD ENCIRCLEMENT DENIED

Pahiatua Herald, Volume XLX, Issue 14839, 10 September 1941, Page 5

LENINGRAD ENCIRCLEMENT DENIED

ENEMY’S CLOSE APPROACH. Reuter’s Moscow correspondent says the Germans certainly have not my where like encircled Leningrad. They have approached fairly elos«» only from th© south-west but not close enough for practical large-scale shelling. A Russian night communique states: “On Monday our troops were engaged in fighting the enemy arm** the entire front. In the Smolensk direction a 26 days’ battle concluded with the destruction of the Fifteenth Infantry Division, the Seventeenth Motorised Division, the Fifth Tank Division, the 137th Austrian Division, the 178th, 197th and 268th Infantry Divisions and with the capture of the town of Neinia. The remaining enemy retreated in a westerly direction.

“Our air force continued their attack on enemy troops and planes on enemy aerodromes. On the night of Sunday our planes attacked Bucharest. During Saturday 62 pianos were destroyed in aerial combats and on aerodromes while our losses amounted to 33 planes.’*

By contrast with what is happening round Leningrad the ballet season opened last night in Moscow to an audience in which British and Allied uniforms predominated “a whole array of Royal Air Force tunics could be seen.”

British and American tanks, planes and other war material arriving through Iran for Russia’s southern front are described as hopelessly insufficient for the battles now being fought on a scale which the British people seem incapable of comprehending. Sending this news from Stockholm to the Daily Telegraph

correspondent warns that “unless sufficient aid arrives quickly Hitler may through Allied dilatoriness pull off the riskiest gamble of his career.”