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Zurich Herald, 1942-11-12, Page 3Stillwell s Chinese Prepare to Take the Road Back, ,�i ..i�• '�.b Somewhere in India Gen. Joseph W. Stillwell's war -weary Chinese army is preparing for a recon- quest of Burma. Driven backward step by step through jungles and over mountains; beset by disease and weakened by lack of 'rest and food, these men never lost their fighting spirit, Now, tutored by officers and technical advisers, they are learning to use new American fighting equipment. VOICE OF THE PRESS A BOY SOLDIER A rosy-eheeked boy of 12 is a bit young to be serving in the front lines, but there are quite a few in Russia. Leland Stowe tells how he met one little veteran, Petya Kuputoviski, an orphan. The boy escaped barefoot from his village after the Germans came. He had seen the Fascists burn to death his mother, two younger brothers and two sisters, together with all the Jews and families of guerrillas they could find. —New York Post AD INFINITUM Once upon a time the average man could do his own bookkeep- ing. Then he had to hire a secre- tary to keep up with Government forms. Now, with questionnaires and forms to make out for gas and oil and food and pants, he has to hire a secretary for his secretary to keep even with the game. —Strh.tford Beacon -Herald _0_ AND SO IT GOES Courtship He broadcasts. She listens in. Honeymoon She broadcasts. He listens in. Now They brodacast. The neighbors listen in. —Windsor Star —o— WHY HESS FLED Possibly Rudolf Hess skipped to England to get away from his wife. We don't know the lady; but, from what we know of Ru- dolf, we'd be better able to under- stand it if she had done the skip- ping. —Chatham News JUST TOO BAD! A German correspondent, at the front in Russia, complains in a broadcast: "What we have gained one day, we must fight for all over again the next day." Now, isn't that just too bad! —Hamilton Spectator —0— EDUCATION You, only get the foundation for your education at school. The. world gives you the education proper. —Quebec Chronicle Telegraph Malta Saved By Force .of Prayer Malta's long resistance against overwhelming Axis odds was at- tributed directly to the force of prayer, by Sir William Dobbie, ,former governor of the island, in a broadcast talk. "During the two years of the siege," said General Dobbie, "I was very conscious of the good hand of God upon us. I am sure that the continued safety of Malta was ultimately due to His divine protection. Dobbie, who held nightly Bible classes on bomb -scarred Malta, is sure that he is not alone in his convictions. "Many others share it with me," he said, "and we are glad to acknowledge it humbly and thankfully." "I am convinced that God does still answer prayer. I believe that rceognition of this fact was the secret of the spirit, endurance and fortitude shown by so many persons in Malta. "Lessons which we can draw from this epic story are: firstly, a stout heart still produces great results; secondly, co-operation in efforts and a determination to help each other is vitally import- ant, especially in times of stress; and thirdly, acknowledgement of God through Christ and trust in Elim is now, as ever, the thing which matters most." "Pig clubs" are supplying the British larder with mare than 7,000 Ions of pork annually. SCOUTING Boy Scouts of Kingston, On- tario, operated a canteen at their summer camp, and turned over the net proceeds, $13.00 to the B -P Chins -Up Fund to aid British Boy Scouts who have Iost their homes and Scout headquarters. * * * Patrol Leader Alan McRobert, 13 -year-old British Boy Scout, was paddling his boat along the seashore when he saw a Royal Air Force plane crash into the sea with one engine on fire. The pilot was able to free himself from the wreckage but lost consciousness. Alan hurried to the rescue, and supporting the pilot on his frail craft he brought him safely to shore. One false move on the Scout's part would have capsized the boat. - To aid in the food production program in Great Britain, Boy Scouts of the let Lyons Troop, Durham, have all decided to keep and raise rabbits. * * * Because The Scout Leader, official publication of the Boy Scouts Association of Canada, is included in the ruling forbidding the mailing of newspapers and magazines overseas, a campaign is being inaugurated across Canada: to have Boy Scouts write regu- larly to their farmer leaders now serving with the armed services in Great Britain and on other fronts. * * * Boy Scouts of Richmond, Eng- land, journeyed to their summer camp by boat to avoid creating further problems for the railways. * * Boy Scouts of Worcester, Eng- land, make the most of opportun- ities. They have operated a toy shop and have built scores of toys from material salvaged from blitzed buildings in their city. Wood Pulp Used In War Powder Smokeless powder is the pro- pellent that hurls every bullet and shell of modern warfare. In normal tines smokeless powder is made from cotton lin- ters, the short fuzz remaining on the cottonseed after the longer, spinnable fibers are removed in the gin. But today's war demands are so great that the cellulose of wood pulp must help out. It is coming from the spruces of Maine, the spruces and hemlocks of the Pacific Northwest and the slash pines of the South. Much pulp- wood, as well as prepared wood- pulp, also is imported from Can- ada. During the first half of 1942, more than a third of the cellulose going into American military pow- der was from wood -pulp and it is estimated that in 1943 this pro- portion will be 60 per cent. Nazi Losses Said To Be 4,000,000 Four million German soldiers had been killed or put out of ac- tive service by severe wounds up to the end of August of this year, Eduard Benes, president of the Czech Government in London, told his people in a radio broad- cast on the eve of Czechoslovakia's Independence Day. He said these figures had been obtained through a "Quisling" statement direct 'from Berlin. He described Germany's food position as comparable to that of Imperial Germany in 1917 and said her internal transport was "lamentable and worsening daily." Benes declared that Italy was in the role of the Hapsburg Em- pire during the last Great War, and had become the weakest link in the Axis. LIFE'S LIKE THAT By Fred Neher "You've got me wrong, Warden.. The ladder is for these climbin' roses!" Seventh African Campaign Opens Britain's 8th Army Starts Offensive Action in Libya Grinding their way through the bottleneck that is Egypt's Ala- mein battle line, Britain's cosmo- politan 8th Army has launched the seventh straight campaign of the North African front which has seen blood soaked up by the wind- blown sands of the desert all the way from El Agheila on the Bay of Sirte to within 80 miles of Alexandria. The fluctuating struggle thus has raced east and west along a straight line of 800 miles, each succeeding campaign varying only in detail and components from the previous. This time, the 8th Army is confident, and, under Lieut -Gen. Bernard Law Mont- gomery's order to "destroy Rom- mel and his army," is aiming for the storied shores of Italian Trip- oli, clearing the dark continent's northern shores to the border of Vichy -controlled Tunisia. Action first broke out on the. desert in the fall of 1940. The French North African army was immobilized after the Petainist capitulation and Italian Marshal Graziani marched across the lightly held Egyptian -Libyan bor der. Britsih units fell back to Side Barrani, on the Egyptian coast, and there held up the Ital- ian advance—and held up, too, the lorries loaded ,with Mussolini statues which were to be planted as victory mementos. In December of 1940, Gen. Sir Archibald 'gravel sent his Army of the Nile into the Italian lines and swept westward around the Libyan coast to Bengasi, a drive of 400 miles. Some quarters feel Wavell might have cleaned up all of North Africa but for two rea- sons. First of all, Wavell had to weaken his forces for the ill- fated campaign in the Balkans and the evaporating Fascist col- umns underwent a back -bracing operation with Rommel's appear- ance in the field. * * µ During the late winter and early spring, the campaign bogged down. When Rommel's Afrika E.orp were ready for battle, he let loose with his first famous drive at the end of March, 1941. The 8th Army, such as it was, moved back into Egypt faster than it had gone to Bengasi, then stood fast inside the Egyptian frontier. Of the Libyan conquest, only Tobruk held as a thorn in Rommel's side. * * * Through the late summer and early fall, the battle -front was static' once again and then, at the end of November last year, the revitalized 8th Army struck anew with heavy equipment, described in London as putting the armies on an equal basis for the first time. Rommel suffered his first defeat. He was driven out of Cyrenaica beyond El Agheila on the Bay of Sirte, and the heroic siege of Tobruk was lifted.' * * * The fifth campaign was launch- ed by Rommel last January after a winter narked only by occas- ional raiding forays. The Afrika Korps hit hard. But the 8th Army still was strong and the enemy drive was held after progressing half way across Cyrenaica, or the "hump" of Libya. The fighting once more apparently had bogged down. * * * But in the heat of late May, Rommel's mechanized units and armored columns again struck eastwards. His tanks hit the Bri- tish flank at a well -defended de- sert positipn and then swept into Tobruk, where mobile columns bad been caught"off guard as they pre- pared for a counter -offensive. Losses in man -power and mater- ials were heavy and a fast retreat set in. For 250 more miles the 8th Army fell back until the nar- row desert strip between the Qattara Depression and the sea offered an easily defended line. From July until last Friday, the situation once more was a stalemate. Rommel attempted to break through for Alexandria once during September but his columns were smashed with heavy losses. THE WAR » WEEK -- Commentary on Current Events There Are No New And Easy .ods To Victory hi This War from which. America could launch future offensives, The Japanese ap* peered to be striving for a breach in the United Nations' Pacific frontier. That frontier, anchored in Al- aslca's Aleutian. Islands in the nortu, comes down 2,300 miles to Hawaii with an outpost at Midway. Thence, moving south-west, it runs through the American bases in the South Seas—the Fiji Islands, New Caledonia and New Guinea, with forward positions in the New Heb- rides and the Solomons. I•t is a long, loosely guarded frontier. Submarines can slip through it easily, but beyond its principal strong points large Japanese fleets eannot move in safety. Thus it stands effective guard over Aus- tralia and New Zealand, the coasts of North and South America, while the fighting along its length helps drain some of the Japanese strength aimed at India and China. If the Japanese, by a decisive victory in the Solomons area and a push farther to overrun Ameri- ca's island bases in the South Pac- ific, can puncture this frontier, their rewards will be great. Aus- tralia and New Zealand will stand isolated and in mortal danger. The coasts of South America will lie open to Nipponese raiders. It will become immeasurably more diffi- cult for the United Nations to sup- port India and China in the tests to come. These were the objectives for which Japan sacrificed ships and men as the tenth month of the Pa- cific war ran out. For Japan it was the opening of a new phase, one in which they were seeking to re- gain the initiative they had held in their first five months of rich victories. That initial phase had been followed by five months in which setbacks and stalemate had stopped the Japanese rush. Starting with the surprise attack on Pearl Harbor and the sinking of the British ships Repulse and Prince of Wales off Singapore, the story for the United Nations was one of retreat and defeat. There was heroic delaying action in it: the defense of Wake Island by the Marines, the long artd bitter re- sistance of the Americans and Fili- pinos on Bataan. But the initial momentum of the Japanese and the lack of preparation Try the United Nations were too unbalanced. In Malaya, Burma, the Java Sea and in the Philippines the Japanese overcame all opposition, For the United Nations only time was gained to fight new battles. The Japanese won a rich world. When the aggressor's forces came to a halt, the were spread over more than a quarter of the globe. Through most of the second phase of the struggle the Japanese still held the offensive, but this time the results were different. In the Coral Sea and at Midway Is- lands, Japanese efforts to extend their conquests were decisively defeated in sea -and -air battles fought over hundreds of miles of blue water. In June the Nipponese gained a foothold in the far Aleu- tians. In August United Nations forces took the offensive and lodg- ed themselves in the southern- most Solomons. After the swift conquest of Po- land, Norway, the Netherlands, Belgium and France many people, says the New York Times, began to assume that Ger-many had Some- how changed the fundamental laws of warfare. They believed that be- cause of the application of the gas engine to military uses in the air and on the ground, the great con- flict would be won or lost solely in terms of German "Blitz." To- day we can recognize that this is a misconception. Both sides have newer and deadlier weapons than they had in 1939 and 1940. But there are no new and easy roads to victory. Every present fighting front shows that war is still as costly, as slow and as difficult as ever. The most fluid fighting in this conflict has taken place in North Africa. Tanks there have plunged back and forth across a thousand miles of desert in a bewildering complex of. manoeuvres. Yet dis- patches from the Egyptian front say that the current battle remains "a slow, intense fight like thoso of the First World Wiz." The attack progresses from slit trench to trench. In Russia, whioh the Ger- mans first invaded with the same speed that paralyzed Poland, the Nazi armies have been stalled for more than two months before the single stronghold of Stalingrad. The battle there moves only from house to house. Berlin communi- ques give a conquered street al- most the same importance that they used to give a conquered province. For seven months in the Far East Japan swept everything before her. But since then the op- posing forces have hardly chang- ed position. The fighting has in- creased in intensity; planes and ships have been flung in prodigal - ]y. But Secretary Knox now calls it a "war of attrition." That is what the First World War was. The reason, of course, is because both sides are approaching an equality of power. That balance will net be quickly upset. But the rate of increase now definitely favors the United Nations. The toughness of the conflict was conceded by all the men who have met the Japanese in action. Americans have come to revalue the once -despised Japanese fig+itt- ing man as a courageous, resource- ful and thoroughly treacherous foe. He has Iearned English that he might shout confusing orders to American troops, He will ex- pose himself to machine-gun fire in order to reveal the location of . the machine gun to his comrades. He will use a flag of truce to lure his foes into ambush. He has risk- ed isked valuable ships in peacetime manoeuvres, sending them chas- ing each other blanked out in nighttime seas, that they might learn to fight in the dark. To beat him calls for the best in American fighting men. The Japanese thrust to regain Guadalcanal had been launched with such strength as to suggest that its real objective was to go beyond the Solomons. No longer were the chief stakes an airfield on Guadalcanal and aharbor at Tulagi, from which Japanese planes and submaaines could men- ace convoys bound for Australia, Fascists Celebrate 20th Anniversary Italy's Fascist regime celebrat- ed the 20th anniversary of its rise to power on Oct. 28, and as it did so all the ingredients of a first-class revolution were at hand, The Italian record was not im- pressive in two and one half years of conflict. With the death of Gen. Orst on the Egyptian front Oct. 18, the Italian Army has lost 82 gen- erals since the outbreak of war. The Italian Air Force, once heralded as among the best in Europe, has lost at least 4,000 'planes. Present production bare- . ly reaches 500 outmoded 'planes a month. The submarine fleet, which re- portedly had more than 150 craft at the start of war, has lost at least one fourth of its original strength. Warships lacking oil and in need of repair stay in port because of l3ritish naval and air superiority. Hitler's Plans For World ,After, War Vernon Bartlett, speaking at the British Broadcasting Corporation's overseas microphone recently, said: "I expect most of you have read about the documents captured in Libya from the Germans, which explains to senior officers in the Reichswehr how Hitler envisages the future: A large German army kept entirely for use against what he calls the exterior enemies of the Reich and a large private army for use against the Germans and non -Germans inside the Reich. A. private police array consisting of men very carefully chosen so that they will never—in the words of the document — fraternize with the proletariat. A world always at war. A world in which millions of ordinary simple folk, Germans and non -Germans, would be kept in order by slave-drivers whorl the London Times calls the cream of the scum." REG'L.AR FELLERS—Old Stuff By GENE ' R 5 'TELL U5 ABOUT THE THEATRE LAST NIGHT/WHAT DIDJA SEE? IT WAS MEAT1 THERE WAS A FELLER COME OUT WITH A d) MU5 Eci4e Hite 7RItA A HE TOOK OFF HIS HAT AN' QUES5 WHAT y HE AVEG, UT oy IT A COUPLA SHAKESSAN'% SMONEY E L, COME --� MY MOTHER CAN DO THAT TRICK!ONEY SHE MAKES IT SOME OUT OF HER STOCKIN 11", apfiev • HM ..po.,r,.,,,,,; .ten 'n