Show WEEKLY NEWS ANALYSIS by edward C wayne extending of material aid to russia poses difficult problem for british U S also studies soviet aid question early reports on fighting are vague EDITORS editon 3 NOTE when opinions opinion are in theme he columns column they are those thom of 1 ibe be news new an IY t t and not eess arlly of ehlt h s newspaper nw lapi released b Y W e a tern new ap aper un i on COAL OIL IRON ORE PIG IRON STEEL it SUGAR 1937 11 14 EACH CO COMPLETE SYMBOL EQUALS 10 PER CENT total national production in millions of tons toni coil coal 1940 61 oil and gat gas 1940 pig iron 1940 1491 steel 1940 I 1 sa sugar 35 drawn from an authoritative source the above chart indicates indicate the total amounts of strategic resources produced in the entire soviet union I 1 these c items come from the ukraine and caucasus in the following per cen ages coal 62 oil 83 iron ore 64 pig iron 63 steel VI 47 and sugar r 74 thus loss of the area represents a tremendous blow to B russi a anti an important gain for the nazis this chart was released by b the university casity of chicago round table AID to R reds C ds As nazi GeAnia germany ny and and red russia hurled their armies into the most far flung battle line of au all human history the question of just what aid would be sent to the soviet forces was a moot point on both sides of the atlantic the governments of both britain and the united states declared themselves on successive days as having solved the question as to the aid principle by boiling it down to a very simple equation anybody that is ii fighting nazis is conour on our side in this fight britain announced it would send economic and military aid and the united states said the same but it was not immediately clear just how much of the latter there would be be En glands first move was to increase the effectiveness of her bombing raids on occupied france and german cities raiding both by a lay day and by night and reportedly downing many nazi airplanes in fact the RAP RAF reported the dropping of as many bombs by weight in two weeks of the russian F warfare as they had in a whole month previously heavy american bombers were constantly arriving on the scene in england and these presumably permitted the british to regard planes as slightly more expendable than they had viewed them previously sly there did not seem to be any question of ferrying airplanes to russia rather the only serious question of a changed policy on the part of england was the suggestion in some quarters that it might be a good thing for britain to cross the channel with soldiers and tanks now that hillers Hit lers back was turned that britain was watching the russo german war with her fingers crossed was evident in the military answer to this suggestion the first objection was that the channel ports had bad been so blasted that they would not be suitable for landings of large numbers of troops and that it if the germans should win a sudden and swift victory over the russians then limited forces of british on the continent might find themselves in a very precarious position therefore the question of british aid to russia seemed to be largely one of sending an advisory military mission which was done at once and the extension of more liberal trading credits in the united states aside from the fact that the question of any aid at all became a matter of vitriolic debate the actual aid to the reds boiled itself down to the same thing president roosevelt said even it if russia were to send us a lit list of her needs it is not possible to fill the order as one would go to a store our munitions factories including the airplane plants are completely busy filling our own needs and those of britain the question of time was important for the united states did not want to send planes and other equipment to vladivostok thence to start the long trek across siberia and then to arrive just in time to fall fail into nazi hands yet this government did unfreeze russian credits in this country undoing an action it had taken just 10 days before messages of sympathy and encourage encouragement men t were sent by sumner welles although he plainly stipulated as churchill had that american alms and ideals were utterly foreign to those of stalin anthony eden was the official spokesman for britain and his words had the same portent and so history in the gross was being written edh an estimated men in action on an two sides of a 2000 mile batt leline FIGHTING clouded the russo german war was odd in that it was being carried on without the benefit of war correspondents of little value as they are in modern warfare where they are scarcely able to keep up with the swiftness of events and where they are just as at apt as civilians of other types to become casualties themselves they were here badly missed in this the greatest est battle from point of numbers abd power of all history it would have taken an army of them to cover a 2000 mile front to begin with and in in the second place the nazis barred all correspondents from the front and the russians did likewise the nazis were using soldier correspondents but the feeling among readers of was that they were more more than usually uncommunicative it was impossible to do more on a war map than to draw hazy lines with arrows pointed at the district distri ctr where one side or the other claimed that the action was taking place estimates of the number of men and machines in action weir were of the haziest conjecture running all the way from divisions on a side to and the plane guesses from 2000 on a side to there othere were even skeptics on the street who asked who knows cheth er ther theres cesany any fighting atall at all the answer to that was to be i fo found on the western front where bombing of england had been aban dined I 1 and virtually german defense agte 0 the air hitler said wiser observes observers would could not have permitted that unless the real mccoy mccobin McCo yin in the way of a war blitz were going on atthe at the eastern front IDA both sides made the most optimistic claims the germans claimed uncounted planes shot down and destroyed on the ground the russians S said the count in the first week was wits for them for germany the germans claimed that wiped out a whole division and that their blitz was moving forward on schedule and that a great victory would be announced momentarily the russians counie countered red with the statement statement that atno at no place had the nazis moved into actual prewar pre war russian territory and that at some points their own troops were on the off offensive one instance of the difficulty of getting facts fron from the dame came in the battle of the river which the germans first claimed to have crossed without difficulty later said they had established establish ed by hard fighting a bridgehead across the two days after they had pr previously announced an easy and swift crossing As to the the russians said 1110 10 barges of the enemy crossed a wide river under cover of a fog but bui were hurled back later with terrible and this river was supposed to be the same the russians claimed warsaw and constants constanta important cities in nazi nail occupied territory in flames fames and heavy damage on helsinki and danzig the germans said t they hey were burning up leningrad dussias Rus sias second most populous city 6 miscellany BROOKLYN N Y public sc school hool children were x given en an emergency air raid drill getting them in in on the ground floor in case of air attacks on the metropolis LONDON the RAF has young pilots who were born in the united states according to ao an official report most of them enlisted in canada DAYTON OHIO fred the iron iron lung daddy is practicing with ai B portable outfit that will permit him to walk about aa d |