4 in the world.

a

© up the flagstaff.

* is still at halfmast.

Moscow Celebrates

By RAYMOND -2RTHUR DAVIES

(By Wire from Moscow) :

T EEMING millions of citizens in

Victory in Europe.

jammed ancient Red Square, Revolution Square,

front of the American Embassy.
| There has never been a night
like this in Moscow, and perhaps
The people were
_ proud — victorious. Soviet peo-
»ple were on their streets.

The youths were everywhere.
» Young girls with gay kerchiefs
"and wearing their best and most
‘colorful clothes, thousands of
j young men, tens of thousands of
youngsters were everywhere.
q Students paraded, wandered and
"wove in and out of traffie hold-
‘ing aloft red flags. They toast-
'ed the Red Army men they met
_by throwing them high into the
air and holding them close, then

| throwing them up into the air

“again. American and British
“soldiers joined in the fun *and
) were treated as great favorites.
People danced and people sang,
» people cheered and people kissed,
/people greeted and people wept,
| openly unashamed as they re-
called the price they have paid
‘for this freedom and victory.
And: yet somehow, celebration
Was not quite like the celebra-
'ticns in Toronto, New York,
endon. - People on the whole
| were more reserved; night clubs

= weren’t jammed, there was al=.

most no drunkeness observed.

q People couldn’t—didn+ forget

the millions of dead, maimed
' and wounded. They couldn’t for-
fet the tortured prisoners of
| Maidaneks. the ravaged homes

}and despoiled pastures.

They remembered surrend-
»ered armies do not mean the

7 complete defeat of fascism.

I came into Red Square im-
3 mediately after my radio
| broadcast, I saw a tremendous
| crowd of youngsters running to-
“ward the exits from the Square.
» Crowds laughed and cheered,
/applause thundered. I looked
closer. In the midst of the crowd
“was a young American major.
He was setting the pace, and

Ba huge crowd of youth ran be-

‘hind him. : ‘

In front of the American Em-
bassy, tens of thousands as-
‘sembled all day. When with

| Sreat difficulty I shouldered my

Way through the dense crowd,
'1 saw an American soldier on
“the baleony run the Soviet flag
The crowd
'Toared its approval. Near him
two girls had obtained bou-
quets of flowers, from no one
“knews where, and were throw-

) img them to people. Street-cars

} and’ electric busses had to stop.
| They were unable to penetrate
/the dense throng. Behind me
/ 2 young major said to his blond
Companion. “You see. The flag
President
| Roosevelt died too’ soon. He
would have like to see all this.”

A friend of mine called. “I
am hoarse,” she explained. “I’ve
been at the American Embassy,

the French Embassy, and I
have no voice left.”
At about six 6’clock, huge

violet projectors took their po-
Sitions throughout the city.
Rumors spread with the speed
of lightning. “The salute will
be unprecedented, “A thousand
£uns, yes a thousand guns.’
And still Moscow poured into
the centre.

By eight o’clock the squares

were so jammed that they
seemingly could take no more
newcomers. These are not

small squares.

Each can. easily
held a half a

million people.

Suddenly the tuneful bars,
“Shiroka Strana Moya Rod-
haya,” which aways preceded

important announcements sub-
stituted the dance music on the
loud speakers. The announcer
boomed, “At seven forty-five
there will be an important an-

nouncenient.”’ The people
guessed that Satlin would
speak. They were wrong. It
“was a salute for Prague, the

last Slay capital to be liberat-
ed by Red Army trops.

AT eight forty-five Levitan, -
foe 3
the announcer, spoke again.

This time there was no doubt.

Stalin would speak at nine.
The people jammed as close
as they could to the speakers.
All stopped. The
people were hushed. I. looked
from the ‘windows of my hotel

movement

everlooking Revolution Square.
One moment there was motion,

restlessness, then as Stalin’s
voice came over the speaker
and echoed in the streets of

Moscow, there was silence, all
movement ceased. For the first
time I saw the Soviet people as
they have been throughout this
war. One monolithic group,

the Soviet Capital celebrated the historic occasion of
Everyone that could walk was in the city’s centre. Millions

Sverdlov Square, and Okhotny Ryad in

massed about its leader. Mil-
lions of people welded into one
unit.

Stalin was brief. His speech
is new history. He spoke of the

capitulation of the German
troops. He reminded the peo-
ple that German decuments

were scraps of paper but sur-
render of German arms was
not. “Our labor was not in
vain,” he told the multitudes.
“The struggle of the Slav na-
tions against their ancient ene-
my has ended victoriously. Ger-
many has been smashed. Hit-
ler promised to carve up Rus-
Sia so that we could never rise
again, but it was Hitler’s Ger-
many that went down to defeat,
even though the Soviet. Union
does* not intend to dismember
Germany.

“The war in Burope,” Stalin

concluded, “has ended with a
crushing Victory ~ for Soviet
arms.”

The “leader’s every word was
drunk in by the people, who in
those few minutes reviewed
their lives during the terrible
years of war. Motion pictures
will do justice to the faces of
the people in these moments. I

hope that they do not omit the

elderly couple who stood listen-
ing in rapture quite close to
me. After the Speech, the old
woman wept bitterly. How
many had she lost I asked my-
self.

ITALIN’S speech was over.

Again the crowds moved to-
wards Red Square, to see, if
possible, the salute from the
last order of the day of the
war in Europe. Suddenly, at
exactly ten- o’clock, projectors
shot their violet and mauve
fingers, reckets spiralled from
the roofs of hundreds of build-

May 19, 1945 — Page 13

ings. A moment passed, then
a roar absolutely unforgetable
was heard. The guns roared and

then the echoes travelled
through the city. There was
silence, and then another tre-

mendous roar and rockets again
arched upwards.

The crowds looked up in
amazement. This never had hap-
pened in their lives. There was
a _roar:.of applause, and ,ap-
plause swept the crowd like a
prairie fire. High in the air,
supported by the friendly bar-
rage balloons, a huge red flag
waved in the glare of the many
searchlights. © _

Applause | thundered again.
The people shouted, pointed. Be-
hind the House of the Council
of People’s Commisars, high in

the sky, Stalin’s likeness ap-
peared on a screen held be-
tween two blimps. The guns

kept up their thunderous sym-
phony.

Then, as the last 30 salvoes
rescunded, and as the people
prepared to leave, squadrons of
invisible planes, their flying
lights lit, darted through the
sky, dropping multi - colored
flares. Mushrooms of brilliant
color grew in the air, developed
into huge blobs of color, float~
ed lower and lower only to be
born again. In the streets the
loudspeakers shouted slogans of
victory. In every square, cele-
brants vrejoiced.. Youngsters
marched. In front of my hotel,
as I was returning, from my
night broadeast, a group of
students carried two red flags
between them, and a Union
Jack Thousands followed.

Tomorrow was another work
ing day. Tomorrow the tre-
mendous job of peace and re-
construction would begin. To-
night was the night for cele-
bration of victory, victory and
memories.

Ehrenburg

the Hitlerites are pursuing a
policy of intrigue which they
have long been hatching and
which conforms to their whole
nature. They are striving by
their actions to sow distrust
among the United Nations, to
foment dissension among the
Allies, to avert—if ‘only for a.
time—the last mortal blow of
the Allied Armies, and to
achieve by means of military-
political intrigue what they fail-
ed to achieve by armed force.

As to the fear experienced by
the Hitlerites on account of
their past and present crimes,
this sentiment does of course
play its part. But as will be
seen from what was said above,
the fear -and terror of the Hit-
lerites is not the whole thing. It
should be clear to everyone that
if the Germans were guided by
fear in their present criminal
policy, they would probably noé
go on trying so persistently to
sink British and American ships

with’ their submarines; they
would not haye bombarded Eng-
land with flying bombs as they
did until recently, and would not
continue to slay war prisoners,
soldiers and officers of the Al-
lied Armies.

From this it follows that
quite a different explanation
from the one Ehrenbure offers
in the columns of Krasnaya
Zvezda must be found for the
fact that the Germans have
weakened their front in the West
and are so stubbornly resisting
in the Hast, for the fact that,
in the words of Ehrenburs, “we
did not take Koenigsberg by
telephone and we are not cap- -
turing Vienna with cameras.”
This is all the more necessary
because Ehrenbure’s unfounded
inferences and conclusions may
confuse the auestion and will at
any rate not help expose the Hit-
lerite policy of intrigue aimed at
sowing dissension among the
Allies.

TIGER JOE
DO NOTHING! Ff
WHY YOU
WANT 2

FEDERATED PRESS -20- ==

COME WITH ME,
YOu SQUEALING
LITTLE PIG!

D3

igal
\

S WHAT 16 Y SIRE, HERE 1S
THIS? THE SPY OF
BY THE GUERRILLAS
WHO HAVE BEEN ~
CAUSING US SO
MUCH PETTY
ANNOYANCES!

Ss

SO! WHAT HAVE You aN
TO SAY FOR YOURSELF
L YOLI TRAITOR?

SOE SAY--

PHOOEY!

PERMIT ME TO

DESTROY HIM AT
ONCE, HONORABL
COMMANDER | gg

he

NO! NOT YET!
WE WILL USE
THIS’ OAF FOR
OUR OWN AIMS!

LET THE WORD BE
SREAD THAT -HE WILL
GE EXECUTED IN Two
DAYS... HIS FRIENDS
WILL MAKE AN EFFORT
TOSAVE HIS WORTH=
LESS HIDE... WE SHALL

BE READY FOR THEM!
—~
SS, a
CW a Ss Bay
(= 7, i

OOH! PLEASE ©

LET ME DIE--- —
AND LET NOTHING
HAPPEN TO THEM!
TIGER JOE SO
LITTLE -----AND
GUERRILLAS SO

>
Z

THAT NIGHT..INTHE GUERRILLA HIDE-OUT----

MILA! THE |
JAPS ARE GOING
TO KILL TIGER