Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that General Eisenhower disclosed of the successful day in Alife, as well nearby Piedimonte d'Alife, both captured, withstanding a German assault, as the Fifth Army clung to the heels of the pursued German forces, unable thus far to establish a new position north of the Volturno River along the Massico Ridge. A British contingent of the Army also successfully resisted a German attack at Cancello on the north bank of the Volturno. The intent of the attacks had been to ward off General Clark’s forces to buy time for the Nazis to firm up their new lines.

The Fifth Army was now proceeding to Venafro, eighteen miles northwest, the eastern anchor of the new German line, overlooking the roads to Rome.

American planes assisted the Partisans under Tito in Yugoslavia, conducting bombing raids on German occupation forces southeast of Zara, on the harbor at Split, and at Skopje.

American Marauders attacked successfully a Nazi airbase west of Paris, meeting light resistance and returning without a loss. The RAF the night before had struck targets in Western Germany.

On the Russian front, the Red Army moved to within eighteen miles of Krivoi Rog, with the goal of entrapping a half million German troops in the area of the Dneiper bend and in the Crimea. German air strength was reported too emasculated to repel air attacks by the Soviets in the area.

The Russians now controlled three-quarters of Melitopol, key to the Crimea.

An account in Voelkischer Beobachter, Nazi Party organ, claimed that German intelligence had learned of a plot put in play by King Victor Emanuele and Pietro Badoglio of Italy to kidnap Der Fuehrer by luring him to Italy for a supposed conference to determine the best way for the new Italian Government to behave against their common enemy.

Apparently, the Abwehr had decoded readily the double-entendre of the message, causing the High Command to refuse the invitation.

Hal Boyle recounts of the near misses, and occasional deadly hits, by friendly fire in the war. He also relates of the tired feet of soldiers during the Sicily Campaign as they had to hoof it through tough mountainous terrain twenty miles each day. Said one sergeant, they came to call it the “bedsheet war” in Sicily because every time they entered a town, bedsheets were hung out as signs of surrender.

During the third day of the Moscow conference, Josef Stalin granted an audience to Sir Anthony Eden, British Foreign Minister. Indications were that he would also meet with Secretary of State Cordell Hull.

A British spokesman indicated that the groundwork was being laid for an upcoming meeting of the three heads of state.

Henri, Count of Paris, pretender to the French throne, arrived in Seville, Spain with his mother, the Duchess of Guise.

And, sadly, Crickett, the little Chihuahua of former Congressman Aaron L. Ford of Mississippi, had to be put to sleep after it had bitten its owners, the Congressman and his wife, Mrs. Ford. Crickett had unfortunately been the victim of a bite on the head from another dog, a black mongrel dog--a dirty little mongrel dog unnamed in the report but probably bearing the moniker "Earl". It seems that the dirty little black mongrel dog Earl had lived near a District home whose owner possessed a rabid dog. Hence, naturally, by the law of proximate causation, Crickett, the beloved Chihuahua of the Fords, by dint of the ferocious activity of the dirty mongrel dog Earl, had to be put to rest as the Fords underwent treatment for prevention of rabies.

It was not indicated just how little Crickett got the better of the Fords and managed to attack both the former Congressman and his wife. Perhaps, the Congressman tripped over Crickett, prompting Crickett to bite him, at which point Mrs. Ford intervened and sought to rescue her husband from the relentless grip of the mad bandito which was once their gentle, loving Chihuahua but for its encounter with the mongrel dog Earl, and thereupon was bitten also.

But, we only seek to fill a void in the story which is sorely missing.

On the editorial page, "Loafer Squad" reports with dismay and disgust the attempt by the Charlotte police chief to implement the Governor's edict, "Work or Fight", by arresting 15 hapless vagrants caught loafing on the streets of Charlotte. Nary a one, when informed of their unconstitutional choice, chose to fight. So, now it was off to the hoosegow with them for loitering.

Before this enforcement had taken place, only a handful of black men had been arrested under the law, for sitting on the post office wall.

The editorial proclaims, let the tocsin resound of freedom unto the welkin. The loafing class of North Carolina, far outnumbering the workers, should rise up and rebel against this unjust edict of the Governor and foment revolution in the streets until they ran crimson with the blood of the oppressor.

Only problem was that they were probably too lazy.

"Exit the Masters" wonders at the respectful words of the Nazi labor commissioner to the impressed foreign laborers shipped to Germany, a contrast to Nazi behavior in days past when the unwilling conscript of the Reich was treated as a draft animal or simply exterminated if too weak or too old to work. The piece recalls the tragedy of Lidice, of Rotterdam, of Warsaw, and speculates whether these Nazi masters, now so tender to their foreign laborers, ever then felt human commonality with their victims.

"Whoa, Boys!" calculates that the Treasury's proposed tax plan to raise an additional 10.5 billion dollars in revenue for the war effort would, when combined with state taxes, amount in some cases of the very wealthy to tax rates in excess of 100%. If the Victory Tax were repealed as part of the package, as contemplated, then its limit on taxation to equal no more than 90% of taxable income would be eliminated. The upshot would likely be that states would simply not collect taxes, as in the case of Canada in 1941 when the provinces suspended collection in favor of rebates by the national government.

Samuel Grafton is amazed to find The New York Daily News, a week befire railing against England for supposedly selling Lend-Lease goods at a profit, now advocating that the U.S. join with Britain against Russia. How quickly the worm had turned when Russia suddenly entered the mix of unsettling bedfellows. Fellow isolationist Robert McCormick of The Chicago Tribune had engaged in similar chameleonesque behavior.

The reason for the sudden switch in lines, suggests Mr. Grafton, was that the overall strategy was to derail the Roosevelt foreign policy to obtain a secure world post-war. Only the tactics thus had changed in the course of a week.

Drew Pearson spends the bulk of his column sounding out the debate in the House on the Administration’s determination to get passed a food subsidy.

Raymond Clapper begins his piece lamenting the plight of Nobel Prize winning playwright and historian Romain Rolland. At first reported dead, he was now listed as gravely ill inside a Nazi concentration camp, a fate worse than death for Mr. Rolland.

Mr. Clapper recalled a line from Jean-Cristophe by Mr. Rolland which Mr. Clapper had read before the war began in Europe: "Think with courage."

He also recalled being serenaded on the guitar by a colonel who interrupted his songs to say that war was on the way and airplane production needed therefore to be dramatically increased. The colonel was now General Carl Spaatz, commander of the Northwest African Air Forces.

The men, such as Sumner Welles, such as Wendell Willkie, such as Senator Ball and his fellows in the Senate, who favored a strong United Nations post-war resolution, says Mr. Clapper, thought with courage. They looked ahead to the future world rather than being content merely to act, however courageously, in the present one. And they thought about how to achieve peace and prevent war in which other courageous men, such as those now flying under the command of General Spaatz, had to fight and die.