Closer to Russia

In Poland, in Austria and throughout the Balkan peninsula, more angry and embittered objectors to Hitler's New Order dug gun or saber from under the floor and went off to mountain passes or to city cellars to kill Germans. Last week:

>Polish guerrillas fired a German ammunition train north of Warsaw.

> Albanian mountaineers proclaimed an independent Albania and fought the Italians on three fronts.

> Ljubljana, capital of Slovenia, was cut off from the rest of the country as Italian occupation forces sought to mop up Partisan patriots and restore order.

> In Southern Bosnia the towns of Kupres and Focha changed hands again as General Draja Mihailovich's Chetniks fought to improve their positions for winter. Mi-hailovich took the towns at a cost of between 600 and 900 casualties.

> The Yugoslav People's Army (Partisans), under onetime Spanish Republican Leader Kosta Naditch, continued an offensive hopefully timed to relieve pressure on Russia. Other Communist-led Partisan groups operated in a belt running intermittently from near the Italian border through Montenegro and Southern Serbia. > In Plovdiv, Bulgaria, guerrillas or parachutists blew up an armament works, wrecking buildings, machines and stocks of rifle barrels.

> Nazi General Paul Bader decreed martial law throughout Serbia.

New revolts and insurrections from Albania to Slovenia seemed to be organized either by spontaneous local groups of peasants and workers or by Communists. Said a traveler to Istanbul from Sofia: "The Bulgarian people today see the sole hope for their country's future salvation in the creation of closer ties with Russia." The London Daily Herald's correspondent cabled from Istanbul: "If a Balkan front were to be opened up by the United Nations today . . . there would be revolution in Bulgaria tomorrow."

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