Daily Post - 23.07.1941, Blaðsíða 2

AIL . P O > T
2
DAILY POST
ia ijwued by S. BenedlktMon
publiaher of Daily Poat.
Orffice: 12, Austuratrœti. Ttl*-
phone >715. Reykjevik. Prin-
ted by Alþýðuprentamiðjam.
Wednfesday, July 23, 1941.
Nazi Militars
Prestige Siffering
Monday’s attacks on enemy
bases in the occupied countries
mark a new phase in the air
offensive agaii^st Germany.
For the first time the heaviest
British bcmbers were used in
a daylight attack on industri-
al objectives in Northern
France. And the havoc they
wrought at Lille was terrible.
This strikes an ominous note
for the enemy. Before long the
Nazis will have to make up
their mind either to let the
British continue without any
serious interference to strike
at vital German industries and
communications in the west or
draw a considerable part of the
Luftwaffe from the Eastern
Front — and they can hardly
afford that in spite of boast-
ful clairns to have crippled the
Russian Air Force.
Meanwhile German military
prestige in the occupied
countries is suffering a lot, —
not least because of the slow
progress the Germans are
making in Russia.
Weeks ago Nazi propagand-
ists said the road to Moscow
was oþen. Now they have had
to eat their words. Now it is
considered inopportune to ad-
vance on Moscow, the main
thing is the destruction of the
Russian Army, which, accord-
ing to them, already was a fait
accompli.
”Three-ee Minntes
Mr. Roosevelt”
BEFORE his xieoent return to
London Mr. Quentin Reynoids
iwas reoeived by Mr. Roosevelt.
While he was in the President’s
wtork-room Mr. Roosevelt asked
féave to put through a telephone
call to London. Mr. Quentin Rey-
ruolds was surprised when he
heard that it was to Mr. Churo
hill. He was even miore surprised
when, after a aonversation, the
President said: ‘Well, 1*11 have to
hang up now. My three minutes
are up.‘
The Russian Is A Good Fighter
vT.-*-**.- :í.;
-----»---
By Slr Bernard Pares
!; Sir Bernard Pares has been a specialist on Rus- *
;! sian affairs since 1898. He has visited Soviet Russia í
i; four times, and is at present Professor of Russian in í
!; London University and Director of the School of s
;! Slavonic and East European Studies. Here he re- l
!; veals that Stalm has always stood for the develop- |
;! ment and defence of Russia, as opposed to the Trot- í
;; sky idea of spreading world revolution.
On May 2, 1915, I was at
the spot where Mackensen
first broke through in the great
drive which swept us out of
Galicia and far back to the
Pinsk Marshes, where the
Russian Army is fighting to-
day. I sat on a low hill, with
the great range of the Carpa-
thian Mountains in front of me,
and the action was going on a
quarter of a mile below me.
I could see for some five miles
! on each side; it was an un-
broken line of enemy fire, with
no reply whatever from us. A
soldier passed me. ‘Have you
come from the trenches?’ I
said. ‘There are no trenches,’
he replied; they had all been
wiped out by enemy gunfire.
‘You know, sir,’ said another
soldier to me, not at all as if
he were complaining, ‘we have
only one weapon—the soldier’s
breast.’ Men can die where
they stand, but they cannot
beat metal if they have no met-
al of their own. The division
with which I was that day—
normally 16,000—was reduced
to 500; 'the regiment, from
4,000 to 41 (forty men, one of-
ficer). The figure of Russian
losses for the first ten months,
which I had to bring back con-
fidentially from the Russian
War Office to Lord Kitchener,
was 3,800,000. (Tn the great
ledger of the war casualties,’
writes Hindenburg later, ‘the
record of the Russian losses has
been torn out. Five millions or
eight? We shall never know. I
can only say that over and over
again we had to sweep away
the heaps of Russian dead to
get a free range on a new ad-
vancing Russian wave’.).
i ‘BRACED TO A NEW VI-
I GOUR ....”
If that was the Russian sol-
dier, even in those terrible
conditions, he has a very dif-
ferent task now. Let those who
have not been in Russia for
the last twenty years and seen
the country as it was when they
last saw it make no mistake.
The present Government re-
presents the Russian people
with a vigour and reality which
the dying regime of the Tsar
could never claim. Every Rus-
sian is again fighting for his
home; but this time, infinitely
more than before, he feels his
own share in his country and
has beerí braced to a new vi-
gour for its defence. The chief
effect of Stalin’s Five Year
Plans is precisely that that piti-
ful lack of munitions no longer
exists. Russia is now full of
machinery of all kinds. Rough
and ready it may be, but in all
probability in larger quantities
than Germany can command.
Since Stalin’s triumph over
Trotsky in 1928, Russia has
taken far more interest in her
own development and her own
defence than in vague hopes of
a world revolution. Probably
Americans know a great deal
more than we do about the
struggle between Stalin and
Trotsky, but the whole point of
it was this: that Trotsky stood
at all costs for going on sow-
ing sedition in all other coun-
tries. Stalin has stood for the
development and defence of
Russia; he took as his motto
‘Socialism in one country.’
This means that his princi-
pal argument for the merits of
Socialism is the argument of
example. All the earlier Bolshe
viks were conspirators, who
had spent most of their life a-
broad, and for them world re-
volution was everything. Stal-
in and his collaborators of to-
day hardly ever been outside
Russia. How could they run a
world revolution? Their task
has been different. They have
produced, through the work of
the Five Year Plans, a neW
generation of Russians, hard-
ened and braced by all that the
country has gone through, and
trained in many branches of
administrative experience. —-
This work has offered an un-
limited field of endeavour for
young men in the early thir-
ties, with responsible posts
which could not have come
their way in many other coun-
tries.
THE ENEMY THE RUSSIAN
FIGHTS WITH THE
GREATEST PLEASURE.
All the reports from the
front so far show that the Rus-
sian soldier is fighting with
equal vigour and more initia-
tive than in the last war. They
are before all things national,
and the war cannot fail to em-
phasise more and more all
that is national in Russia. We
all know how the Government
has been hurrying on produc-
tion throughout the Five Year,
Plans. Now patriotic meetings
are taking place in every fac-
tory and the men are themsel-
ves asking to double their
tasks. The Government itself
has reverted to a language that
is entirely national. All the
triumphs of the past, from the
long centuries of Tsardom, are
recalled; and even further
back. the famous Battle of the
Ice, in which St. Alexander
Nevsky routed the old orders
of German knighthood, is cele
brated in a wonderful film.
Everywhere the motto is ‘The
defence of the sacred Soviet
homeland against the insolent
aggressor.’
And the German is the ene-
my the Russian fights with the
greatest resentment and the
greatest pleasure. He knew
him at home through long
generktions as always the local
bully. He did not know to face
this silent widespread pene-
tration of German influence,
and there is nothing that can
please him more than to stand
face to face with the Germn
on the field of bttle.