NORTHERN THEATRE: Soldiers, Arise!

"The Russian troops the Kremlin High Command has thrown against the eastern side of the Karelian bottleneck are probably the most miserable-looking creatures to be seen in uniform in this part of Europe since Napoleon's half-starved soldiers straggled back from Moscow. This is not anti-Bolshevist propaganda, but hard fact."

So wrote Correspondent Leland Stowe of the Chicago Daily News last week after interviewing a batch of prisoners brought in by the unconquered Finns. Correspondent Stowe found them "helpless, tragic wretches. . . . The Russians wore Army overcoats of a cheap, part-wool mixture and uniforms of quilted cotton. . . . None of the men we saw had high boots, but they had ordinary shoes—and several of them, as a result, had feet so frozen they could hardly walk. . . . All said they were reservists, mostly of the class of 1925, and had been called up only three months ago. Most of these men were between 37 and 40. . . . The Finnish colonel said: 'Such infantry we have never seen. . . . They are cannon fodder, but no soldiers.' "

These details, corroborated by other correspondents did much to explain the bog-down of Russia's would-be Blitzkrieg. What possessed Joe Stalin to hurl such cannon fodder at the well-trained Finns could only be guessed. Perhaps he thought cannon fodder could win. Perhaps he is trying to wear down Finnish resistance with inferior troops, saving his best troops to mop up. In any case, by this week fresh thousands of Russians had been thrown into battle on three fronts, attacking the Finns day & night, in wave after wave, trying by sheer force of numbers to beat down their resistance.

Southern Front. After two weeks of holding off repeated thrusts at their Mannerheim defenses in the Karelian Isthmus, the Finns last week began to retake ground previously lost to the Russians. By week's end detailed accounts of fighting became available. Trying to flank the Mannerheim Line, the Russians organized a big attack along the west bank of Lake Laatokka, where the Taipale River flows into the lake. First they had to cross the river, and a Finnish soldier told the United Press's Webb Miller what happened to 500 Russians there.

"They pushed out into the river there. The boats were swarming with men. Our artillery had been held in reserve. It had not fired and the Russians did not know where it was. We opened up on them when they got to the middle of the river. They had gone 100 yards and had 100 more to go. All their boats were blown to pieces. The river was full of dead and wounded and drowning men. The drowning ones screamed. Their heavy overcoats and equipment made it impossible for them to swim. We machine-gunned the masses of them and picked them off with rifles. Nearly every man was drowned or shot."

Balked in this movement, the Russians tried again to get around the north shore of Lake Laatokka between Loimola and the lake. After heavy shelling, their armored cars, tanks and infantry went into action, only to be beaten back by the Finns' own anti-tank guns.