There is in M. Stalin's broadcast to the Russian nation on Wednesday something of a Churchillian quality in that he told his people quite frankly the real state of affairs, hiding nothing, minimizing nothing. It was a model of truthfulness proving to the world A. Stalin's conviction that his people could "take it," and demonstrating his own confidence in the determination of the Russians to fight to the bitter end. There was nothing boastful in the speech, but much encouragement, far more than the shouts of triumph in which the Germans have been indulging, sometimes without very much justification. When a nation's leader manfully admits what the enemy has been able to do against his armies, he earns the respect of the whole world, and what is far more important gives to the communiques which his government issues the certainty or truth which the German official statements can never attain. M. Stalin has by his frank boldness justified Sir Hubert Gough's belief that the declarations of Moscow on the progress of the Russo-German war can be relied upon.
That is important in view of the fact that, while the Germans are making the bombastic boast that the Russians are in headlong retreat, the impression given by the Russian declarations is that they are succeeding in slowing down the German war machine, Which story is correct the next few days will show, but the probabilities are that again the Russians are telling the truth and the Germans winning another paper success.
That view is fully corroborated by the con-fioting stories which the Germans are telling over the success which they claim at Bialystok. The total number of Russians alleged to have been surrounded has in the past few days varied between 1,000,000 and 100,000 while judging from the latest claims some 160,000 have been taken prisoner and 500,000 are alleged to have been slain. London takes the view that German claims to have cut off a body of Russians in the Minsk area may be true, but that there are bound to be odd pockets of resistance which, being behind the German lines will be a nuisance to the Germans. The German story of a catastrophic defeat of the Russans in that district has still to be accepted with very considerable reserve.
What will be more than a little reassuring to the democracies is M. Stalin's outline of the war policy: which he intends following.
It is Russia's traditional policy of leaving nothing behind when obliged to retire which would be of the slightest use to the advancing enemy. He intends that Hitler's swift grab for foodstuffs this harvest shall not succeed.
During the Russian withdrawal, M. Stalin said not a single railway engine or coach, not a single ounce of grain or a single gallon of petrol must be left behind for the Germans.
Farmers must take away all their cattle, and place their corn in the care of State organizations to be transported to the rear zone. In other words the enemy will not be allowed to live on the land, or seize foodstuffs for despatch into Germany, while supplies for their armies will have to be carried over increasingly lengthy lines of communication. If this is faithfully carried out "Hitler will have to wait until the next harvest—in 1942, —before he can hope to reap any benefit from his present venture, if he ever does.
M. Stalin visualizes an enormous national army behind the Red Army itself, a. whole nation devoted to the defeat of the invader, stopping at no sacrifice to maintain the integrity of their land and their honour. He speaks of the present struggle as one between the whole Soviet nation and the forces of Naziism, and, as so many others have done, seeks to differentiate between the Nazis and the people of Germany. There are still many who prefer to maintain that division, even though it is a remarkably slender one. Be that as it may the determination expressed by M. Stalin to fight to the bitter end has in all probability the whole of the nation behind it. Germany has shown that the pretended friendship which it displayed for Russia was no more than an empty figment. The old ideological enmity remains and the fight between the two national systems should prove indeed a bitter one, and one which will eventually lead to Hitler's undoing.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.