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