One expression which I suggest should be banned finally from
political discussions is "holding the line of the Elbe." It might be supposed that the Elbe represented an approxi- mately straight north-and-south line which the Russians were to be prevented from crossing, much as Hitler was to prevent the Allies in .1945 from crossing the Rhine. The map, unfortunately, supports no such illusion. The Elbe, actually, runs clean through the heart of the Soviet Zone from north- west to south-east. Dresden, close to the border of what is now Poland, stands on it. In places the Russians, within the frontier of their own zone, are 160 miles west of the Elbe— and less than one hundred miles from the Rhine. From Frankfurt to Fulda, which is on the frontier of the Russian Zone, is less than eighty miles. .Geographical inaccuracies sometimes matter little. But in this case it is as well to realise that to hold the Elbe line would involve the small preliminary of pushing the Russians back some 160 miles in places.
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