Aug. 18.
At the end of the eighth week of the Ger~ man invasion of Russia, the third German offensive -was reaching' the height of its ferescendo, with the Russians admitting intense fighting on all fronts, In the Ukraine, the Germans appear to have made some advance, but it is generally conceded that the Russiin armies are retiring in good order, fand that the Germans have failed of achieving that annihilation which they have been promising the world they would inflict upon their opponents, The loss of territory which the Russians have been obliged to yield cannot be lightly disposed of, even though the Germans themselves aver that. territorial gains are not their first objective, but the areas they have succeeded in penetrating are industrially "and agriculturally. rich. Yet they are being paid for at enormous cost to the invaders, and it 1s possible that when the truth of the expensiveness of this cam~ paign to the Germans comes to be known {the world will find it difficult to believe that men could so ruthlessly slaughter their fellows for what up to the present have been very shallow successes, Even if the recent Russian claims regard-jing the losses they say they inflicted upon the enemy have to some extent to be Aiscounted,—there is no real reason why th should be, in view of the comparative trut of the Russian communiques as compared with the blatant lying of the Germans—it is still clear that the price the Germans have been paying in men' and material far out weighs any benefits they can hope immediately to receive from their temporary gains against the Soviet. The latest claims by the Russians is that. Hitler started his offensive with 170 divisions, of which sixty were mobile and twenty-six tank divisions. According to Soviet reckoning twenty-five per cent. of the mobile divisions have been destroyed crippled, and, if that figure is accepted as covering the' whole of the German. forer engaged, the Russian claim that the German: have suffered one-and-half millions of casual-tes would not seem to be far off the mark. It hag to be remembered that the German: have been obliged to-attack Russians in. de: fence works, and it is well known ¢hat in such circumstances the attackers. must ox-poet to suffer heavier casualties than the defenders.
One feature of the latest' reports is parti= jeularly noticeable. The Germans appear to be abandoning in some sectors the practice of Griving deep wedges into the Russian post~ tions by means of tanks, followed "up mobile masses, and to have reverted to the older practice of ce-ordinating tanks, infantzy and artillery supported by the alr arm, One of the disadvantages of their favourite method, which at any rate for the time being appears to have been dropped, is that, the Russians followed the practice of permitting the tanks to go through and then attacked the mobile support from the flanks with the result that the, tanks were left isolated, and the following troops either hold up or' des troyed. "The fact that the German command is thus practising more economy than it did in the earlier days of the campaign suggests that the progress of the fighting has forced them to more prudent courses, and that, the wastage which is being inflicted upon them is having its effect upon the decisions of the German high command. That seems to sub= stantiate the Russian claim that the losses {inflicted upon the enemy's mobile divisions" has been such as to give the Germans food for rueftl thought, There are not many weeks more to be passed before the unfavourable weather Son sets in, and the intensity of the present fighting is'undoubtedly due to a desire on the part of the German command to force 'a, decision as quickly as possible. On the other hand. the Russian commanders are playing'a waiting game, and have up to the present evaded every German attempt to en= irene them or-to oblige them to retreat in Aisorder. Nothing has as yet appeared in the despatches, save, from German soure to suggest that the Soviet commands ha not managed to maintain complete control over the forces under them, and, while the 'Germans have inflicted some' substantial local defeats upon the Russians, there has been none to suggest that the latter have not been able to maintain themselves. intact, but fighting a "desperate rearguard action have made their enemy pay dearly for every mile of the advance he has effected. "The Russians have proved themselves to' be splendid. fighters while their equipment has been a complete surprise to their. opponents,
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.