| China

teiet Union, Britain and sd -States have suffi- or considering the de- jer possible in 1943, Sritain and the United sufficient bases for ithe defeat of Japan t year ...” eiresting to place this

=

5

oe

“Gy Over Japan In 1944 us

om the statement is- ® Gentral Committee of #iist Party of China on Wiversary of China’s war

reek by General Doug- ur, Allied commander @ast Pacific theater.

opping, with extrava- and slow progress— -areports indicating vic- ¥ied as Jong as 1949— Jiea of how to end the | and cheaply as pos-

meral MacArthur stat- should be “massive geost main strategic ob- ilizing surprise and fiking power support-

“massive strokes” are )28 seems certain from! ment of Lord Louis

~ eet.” 1B

against the statement

Be

Mountbatten to command Allied forces in southeast Asia, but this does not alter the fundamental needs of China, the main_center of the war against Japan; as set out in the Communist Party’s statement.

“In the present international sit- uation, the Chinese war of resis- tance is confronted with two prob- lems:

1. To win time to overcome dif- ficulties in order to win final victory over Japan.

2. To achieve complete agree- ment between all parties on questions relating to the pres- ent war of resistance and post- War reconstruction in order to defend our counttry better and consolidate our forces for its post-war reconstruction.

“In other words,” declared the statement, “it is a problem of time and unity.”

The statement further declared that “the military and civilian pop- ulation of China must unitedly sup- port Generalissimo Chiang Kai- shek” as the leader of the war of resistance and stated that the Communist Party “recognizes the Generalissimo, not only as the leader of the war of resistance but also of the reconstruction of post-war China.”

Post-war China, it asserted, must be “an independent state, living in a family of nations on the basis of equality and not as a colonial, semi-colonial or vassal state.

“Post-war China must be a unit- ed and peaceful state and not torn by internal strife. It must be a democratic state, neither dictator- ial, semi-feudal, nor soviet, nor socialist.

“Post-war China must make pos- sible the economic wellbeing and prosperity of the entire population and not merely one section of it. It should not confiscate land or factories by force.

“Post-war China must be a dem- ocratic republic on the basis of uni- versal suffrage and the coopera- tion of all parties. In short, the

; new order in post-war China must ;be built on the principles of San

Min Chui, Sun Yat-sen, on the Koumintang program for resist ance and post-war construction.”

1 United States

AWA Endorses Fourth Term

aE in New York the

adyention of the United

Radio and Machine Bei@), representing 500,- 4° in US war factories, 4 exchange of delegates = lish Amalgamated En-

Mion and the Metal mon of the Soviet Union CI@ President Philip ake action to collabor- © British, Soviet and misphere trade union ' resolutions the UER for a speedy attack on = ope, endorsed Presi- felt for a fourth term ‘ ited labor’s no-strike

ig the urgent need for @ labor cooperation, the asked Murray “to in- al delegates from the fet and Western Hem- © union movements to conventicn of the CIO” dther CIO metal work- #0 join in establishing with British and Soviet Rank and file delegates ?Hnion shops.

ding an immediate land | Western Europe, the @ resolution declared: £st strength and assur-

4 ‘ } j

ance of victory in this peoples’ war lies in the combined strength of the United Nations. United, full-scale military action against our common enemies gives the greatest assur- ance of early victory. Therefore we call upon our government and the fovernments of the United Nations to speed the day when the full weight of the military power of the United Nations will be brought to bear against the Western as well as the Eastern and Southern gates of Hitler’s European forces.” Galling attention to reaction-

ary attempts “to sabotage the war effort by creating partisan polit- ical division and strife,” the con- vention enthusiastically endorsed

President Roosevelt for a fourth term as the “outstanding figure around whom the American peo- ple can rally for the uncondi- tional surrender of the Axis.” The action was the first of its kind adopted by a major US

union.

All the international officers were re-elected. They were: Presi- dent, Albert J. Fitzgerald: secre- tary-treasurer, Julius Emspak: and organizational director, James Matles. It was announced that Matles will enter the US army later this month, to join the 110,000 union members already in the armed services.

Red Army General Replies To ‘Experts’

By Major-General Galaktionov

This article, written before the unconditional surrender of Italy, is condensed from the Soviet trade union magazine, War and the Working Class.

= biggest military operations and battles in the summer of 1943, as in the preceding two years, are being fought on the Soviet-German front.

In the course of the summer our Allies have carried out landing operations in Sicily which are now ended in the complete possession of the island. They continue to bomb Germany, Italy and certain districts occupied by the Germans. Such is the general pic- ture of the military operations conducted in Europe over the summer.

The New York Times military observer, Baldwin, while recog-

nizing the Soviet Front is the -

“biggest and most important in Europe,” is of the opinion that the operations in Sicily constitute a second front, and the war in the air over Western Europe a third front.

If one were to reduce the whole Situation to a question of arith- metic, without taking into account the real strategie significance of the military operations, such an enumeration could be continued, and it could be said that the sub- marine warfare, for instance, is a fourth front, etc.

Taking this position, Baldwin declares that the Soviet Union, in failing to recognize the exis- tence of second and third fronts in Europe, thus underestimates the war efforts of Britain and the United States. Baldwin's concep- tion is that not only is there a “second” front in Europe and even a “third” one, but that the Soviet front is able to hold out only thanks to the existence of these fronts; that without them the Red Army woud not have been able to pass over to the of- fensive:

UT what are the facts? In 1941,

when Germany attacked the Soviet Union, Britain did not have the necessary means even for home defense in the event of a German invasion; the United States was not at war at the time. The Red Army was com- pelled to withdraw in the face of Superior enemy forces.

The Red Army nonetheless beat off the enemy with its own forces and routed the Germans at Mos- cow in 1941, The Red Army thus saved the Allied cause and se- cured the time to build up the armed forces of Britain and the United States.

The difficult circumstances un- der which the United States en- tered the war in December, 1941, and the decisive role played by the fact that the German army at the time was completely tied down to the Soviet-German Front are known.

“In 1942 the Red Army again engaged in heavy struggle against Ilitlerite Germany and its allies. And again it held its ground with its own forces. Again, in 1942, the Germans’ main forces were concentrated on the Soviet front, and it was able to dispatch to the African theatre only a few divisions. Due to the shortage of reserves Rommel was compelled to halt his offensive on Egypt. Possessing time to train their armed forees and carry out un- hampered action, the Allies most successfully effected landing op- erations in North Africa.

Would our Allies have succeed- ed in realizing these operations

so successfully had Germany been able to dispatch in May 20 to 30 divisions from the Soviet- German Front for the operations in Africa? By no means. Once again the German armed forces were pinned down to the Soviet- German Front where the Italian expeditionary army, composed of Mussolini’s crack divisions, was routed. 7

The very possibility of carrying out the landing operations in Si- cily was to a considerable extent afforded by the severe battles waged by the Red Army and its splendid victories in the incred- ibly difficult winter conditions.

The Allied operations in Sicily are naturally of great importance, hut they by no means can be regarded as constituting a sec- end front. This is obvious from the solitary fact that these oper- ations not only did not divert a single diyision from the Eastern Front, but what is more, did not prevent Hitler from con- siderably increasing the number of his divisions on the Soviet- German Front. The Red Army is now opposed by a larger num- ber of German divisions than in 1942.

RECAEOING Baldwin's third front, that is, the air front: Both Baldwin and the Scripps- Woward correspondent, Simms, commenting on the American bomber raid on Ploesti in August and the losses sustained by the

American air force in this raid, write that these Josses are ex- plained by the distance of the African bases from Rumania. It would be more convenient to carry out raids from Black Sea bases, but the Russians, Baldwin and Simms state, refuse to place these bases at the disposal of the Allies. After this, Simms, un- abashed, circulates the false state- ment to the effect that the Rus- sians allegedly are stubbornly op- posed to haying British or Am- erican troops fighting shoulder to shoulder with the Red Army.

Here again it is best not to indulge in fictitious stories and instead to look at the facts. What are the facts? Only in one case did the Allied air force directly help the Soviet army and Soviet air force on the front of struggle against Hitlerite Germany. That was at the time when a small group of the RAF operated in the Murmansk area in the autumn of 1941.

Neither the British nor the Am- erican air force ever participated in any other military operations on the Eastern Front, and cer- tainly not because anybody in the Soviet Union was opposed to this. Even more, despite the re- peated proposals from the Soviet side, the Allies, contrary to the

assertion made by Baldwin and his kind, not once expressed a desire to have their troops fight shoulder to shoulder with the Red Army and aireraft on the Soviet- German Front.

If in the autumn of last year a proposal was made for Allied air bases in Baku and Thbisili, where no operations could be conducted against the Germans, is it not clear that it would have been more appropriate to station Al- lied ameraft nearer to the front in the North Caucasus or on the Central Soviet-German Front, where it would have been able to help the Soviet troops? However, the authors of the aforemention- ed proposal rejected this.

Can a proposal to withdraw the Soviet troops from the Trans- causasus and dispatch them to battlefields on the Soviet-Ger- man Front and in their place bring other non-Soviet troops to the Transcaucasus be regarded as a desire to fight shoulder to shoulder with the Soviet troops?

When both Baldwin and Sim- mia strangely enough, now con- fine Allied assistance {6 the use os Soviet bases only for Allied air raids on the enemy’s rears, they thus emphasize how little they are interested in the par- ticipation of the Allied air force in fighting on the Soviet-German Front, where the Soviet army and Soviet air force continue to bear the full weight of the Struggle against the main forces of the common foe.

As is shown, the Allied air raids and the other military operations carried out by them, despite their importance, have not forced the Germans to withdraw a single division from the Eastern Front. What is more, Hitler’s main air forces have remained and continue to remain on the Soviet-German Front. Hence the Allied air raids in Europe: by no means substitute for a second front in Europe, regarding which the Allied pledge still awaits fulfillment.

Wothing remains of Baldwin’s thesis, according to which the Red Army is able to advance only because of the existence of “two other fronts in Europe.” Baldwin favors a drawn-out, protracted war, a war of “at- trition.” Why should he be in a hurry to have the war over with, seeing that this war is not being conducted on the territory ofthe United States?

In the Soviet Union, however, Baldwin’s arguments cannot but be vigorously rejected. They are just a little too reminiscent of the “philosophy” of Moore Bra- brazon who, as is known, saw nothing amiss in the fact that in this: gigantic war not only Germany, the enemy of the Al- lies, was being exhausted, but also the Soviet Union, a member of the anti-Hitler coalition.

ats