A CRITICAL MOMENT
THE necessity of going to press a few hours before the announcement which Mr. Attlee was to broadcast on hursday afternoon means that any general appreciation of the situation attempted here may be defective in some important espects. In the past week there has been promise of change ther than actual change. In Russia the abandonment of Smolensk has been announced since Strategicus wrote his article on a later page. That in itself is of little consequence, for the city had been reduced to a useless shell and there is no reason to believe that the Germans have penetrated far- beyond it. Of e position in the Ukraine there is no reliable news. The rman claims are of the order of mere propaganda, and Russia emains silent. A Stockholm report which may deserve some ence suggests that Marshal Budenny has withdrawn his oops in good order to the east bank of the Bug, and Odessa 's far too strongly defended to fall to any early assault. The position, in short, in that theatre is serious, but far from being desperate. Hitler, indeed, for immediate triumphs, may have to look to the final capitulation of Vichy and the hope of diver- sions created by Japan in the Far East. The latest news sug- gests at least the possibility that some impression has been made on Prince Konoe and his Cabinet by the gravity of British and American intimations as to the effect of any tamper- ing with Thailand. It may well be that still more decisive declarations on that and similar questions will have been made before these words are in print. In all the circumstances, it is to be regretted that the Bill extending the liability to service of conscripts in the United States from one year to two and a half only passed the House of Representatives—for intelligible but unfortunate reasons connected with internal politics—by a majority of one vote. But at least it did pass.
