Thirty Long Miles

The Russians still talked about their parade into inhabited places on the northern front last week--40 one day, 40 the next, "several" the next--but it began to look as if the 30-odd miles to Smolensk would be very long miles for the Red Army.

With the awful steadiness of a creeping barrage, the German counter-attacks were moving northward toward the Smolensk area.

Captain Ludwig Sertorius, military commentator for the German Transocean News Service, said: "The German counteroffensive has shifted . . . in harmony with the general trend of fighting into the northern direction." Having retaken Kharkov, having consolidated positions on the western bank of the Donets, the German efforts crept to the Belgorod Sector, 45 miles north of Kharkov, to the Kursk sector, 120 miles north, to the Bryansk sector, 250 miles northwest of Kharkov. Smolensk is 145 miles northwest of Bryansk.

The Russians will have a hard time reaching Smolensk from the east and north before German counteroffensive reserves reach the area from the west and south. Between the Russian spearheads and the city lies a formidable system of German forts hinged on the town of Yartsevo. If those forts were to be backed up by German reserves moved up from the south, Russian chances of taking Smolensk would be small. "It is necessary," wrote New York Times Correspondent Ralph Parker from Moscow, "to keep a tight check on the impulse to assume that Smolensk is directly threatened with assault."

If the Germans succeed in pinning the Russians before they reach Smolensk, the Red Army may still attempt more drives farther north. But in spite of those drives, the Germans will have succeeded on the northern front, as they had down south, in solidifying lines which had become dangerously liquid. Without Smolensk, the Russians cannot hope for really important gains in the north. When the lines and Russia's muddy earth are both solid again, then one side or the other will doubtless try, try again.

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