23 Days to Paris

NATO's champion fire-eater is Marshal Juin of France, commander of its Central European ground forces and one of the Allies' sharpest World War II fighting men. Last week, addressing reserve officers at Strasbourg, this field-soldier son of a policeman offered a chilling counterblast to Europe's growing complacency:

"The enemy has installed himself in Saxony and in the Thuringian salient, 150 kilometers from the Rhine. This salient is, in the heart of Germany and toward the heart of France, a ... loaded pistol.

"If one transplants to the Rhine region that offensive maneuver developed by the Russians in White Russia against the Germans in 1944, and grants them [the Russians] the same concentration of forces and rhythm of advance, such an attack . . . would be capable of reaching Paris in 23 days."

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