Minesweepers HMS Taitam and Waglan laid down.

GERMANY: U-415 laid down.

U-160 launched.

U.S.S.R.: Moscow is raided by the Luftwaffe for the first time.

Moscow:

Britain and Russia are allies again after nearly 25 hostile years. Sir Stafford Cripps, the British ambassador to Moscow, Vyacheslav and Molotov, today signed a pact which promised that both countries would "render each other assistance and support of all kinds in the present war against Hitlerite Germany."

Stalin looked on, smiling as the two men signed the documents and the official blue ribbons and red wax seals were applied at a ceremony in the Kremlin. Then chocolates and glasses of Georgian champagne were handed round and Stalin, raising his glass, toasted Anglo-Russian co-operation for victory.

The pact, proposed by Churchill, goes further than an agreement to wage war against Hitler; it also commits both countries to an undertaking that "during this war they will neither negotiate nor conclude an armistice or treaty of peace except by mutual agreement."

Churchill has a long memory. It was Lenin's decision to make peace with Germany in 1918 that enabled the german to mount their last great and nearly successful offensive on the western front.

Lwow: The Nazis have posted photographs of Ukrainian nationalist prisoners slaughtered by the retreating Russians and captioned "Jewish killings." They are exploiting a local tradition of nationalism and anti-Semitism to recruit a local militia. Just two days after the Germans arrived, local people were massacring Jews in ' Aktion Petlura' a symbolic revenge for the killing of a Ukrainian by a Jews in Paris 15 years ago.

In Kovno, Lithuanian police have murdered over 3,000 Jews under German supervision, in Jassy Romanian troops killed over 200 Jews and crammed 5,000 into sealed cattle trucks. In Bialystock, the Nazi soldiers spent the first day of the occupation herding the city's Jews into their own blazing synagogue where they died..

PALESTINE: Acre: The first armistice between British and French forces since the Battle of Waterloo was initialled today in the light of a motor cycle headlight. The armistice, ending the fighting in Syria and Lebanon between the Vichy French and the Allies, come as Allied forces tighten their grip on Beirut. For Vichy's commander, General Dentz, it is virtually a surrender.

NORTH AFRICA: General Bastico replaces General Gariboldi as C-in-C of Axis forces in North Africa.