Viipuri, Dec. 9. PON his arrival here, Reuter's Special Correspondent heard the dull rumble of guns as the Finns replied fiercely to the Soviet artillery at Kaunas, seventeen miles away.
The Commander of the Viipuri district, Colonel Mellblom, in an interview, estimated that the Russians had lost at least 100 tanks. The tanks, he declared, were old and thinly plated, while their crews were poorly disciplined and failed against anti-tank traps and the remarkable anti-tank guns which Finlnnd had purchased from Sweden.
Colonel Mellblom admitted that the Red Army had advanced 35 miles in the first week, but declared that they had so far only met Finnish outposts. Not a single Soviet soldier, he added, had broken through the first line defence. He claimed that Finnish losses in this sector were one per cent, of the troops engaged.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.