Imperial Valley Press

Finn Peace Near Stalin Discloses Victory / on Hand: Lauds Allied Help

LONDON, Nov. 6. (UP)—Premier Josef Stalin proclaimed jubilantly tonight that the allies have driven Germany to "the verge of catastrophe" and assured his people that "victory now is near, but to win it great exertions still are necessary."

Adolf Hitler has dragged his satellites with him to the brink of disaster, and Finland is on the point of abandoning her ill-fated alliance with the Nazis. Stalin said in giving the first official sanction to reports that the Finns were trying to get out of the war.

The Moscow radio broadcast Stalin's supremely confident speech to workers in the capital on the 26th anniversary of the Red revolution.

PREDICTS TRIUMPHS
Reviewing the scintillating victories of the Red army since the last anniversary celebration, Stalin predicted imminent new triumphs.

He said the "time is not far ahead" when all of the Ukraine and White Russia will be freed, and "we will also free Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, France, Belgium, Jugoslavia, Czechoslovakia, Poland and Greece."

The allies now are marching together to assured victory over the common enemy, Stalin said in paying warm tribute to the war efforts of the United States and Great Britain, which still cannot be regarded as a second front "but it already is something in the nature of a second front."

Stalin laid down a five-point program embodying the Allied aims as he envisaged them. It comprised these points:

1. Liberation of the occupied countries in Europe; (2) Insuring that the liberated countries are able to choose their own form of government; (3) Punishment of all war criminals; (4) Establishment of order so firm that Germany can make no future attempt at world domination; and (5) Establishment of full collaboration among the nations of Europe on a basis of full, mutual trust.

Stalin said the Red army had killed at least 1,800,000 Germans in the last year, and by its victories at Stalingrad and in the Ukraine had "decided the defeat of the German army."

Stalin spoke for 39 minutes, after receiving an eight-minute ovation.

Stalin said the Germans now "face catastrophe" as a result of the miscarriage of their plans on the Russian front and a rapidly deteriorating economic and military situation.

The Red army, meanwhile, in contributing to that change in the last year, advanced 375 miles in the south and 185 in the north, and exacted a toll of more than 25,000 German tanks and 40,000 guns, Stalin said.

Instead of the 240 divisions faced last year, the Red army this year faces 257 German divisions, Stalin said.