SOVIET ON GUARD

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 80, Issue 243, 14 October 1938, Page 7

SOVIET ON GUARD

SPECIAL WESTWARD DEFENCE PLAN FRONTIER NO-MAN’S LAND RED ARMY AS PEASANTRY (By Telegraph—Press Association —Copyright) Received Oct. 14, 12.40 a.m. NEW YORK, Oct. 13. The Washington correspondent of the- Associated Press says that it is reliably reported that the Soviet is hastening construction of a vast artificial No-man’s land across the western frontier as a first line of defence against Germany. Soviet Russia, having seen the collapse of efforts to forge an international barricade eastward has virtually dropped everything else in order to protect the Ukranian wheatfields against invasion. The programme is designed to slow down and ■ eventually halt an approaching army and is to be dovetailed into the na ural defences of long distances and lack of communication. It provides firstly for deforestation of a belt between the Soviet, Rumania, Poland, Latvia and Estonia, and, secondly, for de-population of that area and resettlement of part of the evacuated towns and farms with trusted Red Army men and women posing as peasants and workers while, in actual fact, they will be guarding the frontiers and checking illegal entry to Soviet territory. Thirdly, the plan provides for the destruction or mining of bridges on roads and railways, fourthly, the construction of a formidable "Maginot Line” on the western quarantine belt. The fifth provision of the scheme is the speeding up of rail and highwaybuilding behind the line to facilitate the transfer of supplies and troops. Sixthly, huge military concentration centres are to be developed behind the area and well-fortified and provisioned air bases.