(See Cover) A girl kissed a soldier good-by
On her porch one lovely night
And as he slipped into the fog
In her window blinked a light. ...
The maiden wrote the soldier
That what they hoped for would transpire,
That her love would never die
And the light would not expire.
Now the soldier fights much harder
For his country—and the light.
This sentimental doggerel was published by Pravda as an inspiration to the Red Army, which with the smell of victory in its nostrils, last week was driving through the army which only three years ago was the smartest in the world.
The simple-minded soldier of the sentimental maiden—for the second time in six months—swept beyond Kharkov driving the Wehrmacht before him. He had swept the Germans from Stalingrad 450 miles, nearly to the Dnieper, been set back to the Donets when his supply lines grew overextended, and now was back again, pushing toward Poltava and the Dnieper, with the smart Germans choking the roads and their single southwestward railroad in retreat.
Farther north, the maiden's soldier only a month before had begun his attack against Orel, opening with a devastating barrage from (dispatches said) 3,000 gun barrels to a mile of front. Now he was pushing crack young German troops back on Bryansk and fighting 1,000 German planes a day that hammered at his ad vance.
North of Bryansk, the maiden's soldier attacked at Spas Demensk.
And near Lake Ladoga the maiden's soldier, said the Germans, was launching still another drive. If this was true, he was undertaking the greatest Russian offensive of the war along the whole 1,000-mile front.
If Poltava falls to the Red Army from Kharkov, the maiden's soldier will threat en Kiev and all the German forces in the Crimea and the Donets bend.
If Bryansk falls, the Red Army can turn northwest toward Smolensk, the nerve center of the German defense sys tem on the central front. In the Nazi-owned Stockholm Dagsposten a Berlin correspondent reported: If the German Army is unable to hold the Russian advance, Germany will collapse. Not only Red soldiers but the Nazis were beginning to see the maiden's light.
Objective. All the Russian pronouncements indicate that the Red objective is now to destroy the enemy army. Said the Army's Red Star: "Our main task is to prevent the enemy from escaping and to destroy their armed forces. When these are smashed, the fortresses will fall by themselves."
The outcome may be the same if the Red Army destroys the German Army or merely drives it back. If the Ukraine can be retaken, if the battle line can be shoved back into Poland—somewhere along the way, the German will to resist is almost certain to break.
The Great Unknown. The Red Army which today threatens Germany with downfall is still the great unknown of this war. As it was underestimated in the beginning, it may be overestimated now. According to Red military commentators, things are going as they are because of Stalin's brilliant strategy.
Little is known of the blunders, something is known of the lessons that the Russians have learned, of the mastery of the art of war which they have now obviously acquired.