RUSSIANS TAKE INITIATIVE

Southland Times, Issue 24592, 14 November 1941, Page 5

RUSSIANS TAKE INITIATIVE

FIGHTING ON CENTRAL SECTOR (Rec. 5.30 p.m.) LONDON, Nov. 12. The situation on the northern half of the Moscow sector of the Eastern Front at present is definitely favourable to the Russians, says the Stockholm correspondent of The Times. The fighting on the northern tip of the sector near Kalinin has markedly abated, but nearer the centre the Russian initiative is causing the Germans serious difficulty. Indeed, it is reliably indicated that the Russians have managed to turn the tables against their adversaries by applying the favourite German annihilation process to several isolated German groups or wedge-tips. One particularly large German unit enveloped between Mojaisk and Kalinin has not yet managed to fight its way out of the pocket and the German command is apparently unable to rescue the surrounded men from outside because it is bending all its efforts with its available reserves against the Tula wing.

The Moscow radio stated that heavy losses in the Kalinin sector had compelled the Germans to bring up reserves. The enemy in the last few days had occupied several populated centres in this sector, but some of these had been recaptured. The Russians were also counter-attacking on the southern front.

A Hungarian communique claims that light forces captured further important points before Rostov and in the Sahakhtui sector. It is reported from Stockholm that the body of General Alexiev, commander of a Russian division, was found on a battlefield northward of the Svir river. M. LITVINOV’S PLANE OVERDUE SIR WALTER MONCKTON ON BOARD LONDON, November 12. A Soviet plane from Kuibyshev, carrying M. Maxim Litvinov, Russian Ambassador to the United States, Mr Laurence Steinhardt, United States Ambassador in Russia, and Sir Walter Monckton, Director-General of the British Ministry of Information, is overdue at Teheran, but it may have made unscheduled stops because of the bad weather. The plane made a muddy takeoff from Kuibyshev. A representative of the Iran Foreign Office waited vainly all Tuesday afternoon at the airport at Teheran. The British Overseas Airways machine, in which a seat had been reserved for M. Litvinov, left for Cairo this morning without him.

DESPATCH OF BRITISH ROLLING-STOCK

(8.0.W.) RUGBY, November 12. The Southern Railways workshops have completed 1000 wagons for export to Russia in 10 weeks. Normally this would take 12 months. Fifty London, Midland and Scottish Railway and 92 London and North-Eastern Railway freight locomotives have been equipped for service overseas to help our Russian allies, and together with tenders and spare parts, have either been or are being despatched. Some are already in service. The locomotives provided by the L.M.S., before being sent overseas, are being equipped with oil-burning apparatus for using oil fuel. All the L.N.E.R. engines are of the former Great Central Railway design, which proved to be especially suitable for overseas use in the last war. The Southern Railway is building 100 steelframed open 12-ton wagons. Tire L.N.E.R. is helping by cutting wagon timbers from logs and supplying certain ironwork details for these wagons, while the L.M.S. is assisting by providing stampings of standard wagon parts and by supplying considerable quantities of timber.

CATHOLIC ATTITUDE TOWARDS RUSSIA

(8.0.W.) RUGBY, November 12. Viscount Fitz Alan of Derwent, speaking in the House of Lords on the Catholic attitude towards Russian collaboration, said the report that Catholics were not entitled to support Russia was probably Nazi propaganda. “I wish to repudiate it absolutely,” he said. “Cardinal Hinsley recently made it quite clear that Catholics are not only entitled, but ought from the Christian point of view, to support the Soviet in this conflict. We cannot retract the condemnations we used to level against the Soviet, but there are signs of a change in the politics of Russia in this respect.”