Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that the Fifth Army had advanced three miles to take Massico Ridge, western anchor of the German defense line through the Upper Volturno Valley, providing the Allies with an unobstructed view of the entire Garigliano River Valley. The point taken was four miles north of where the coastal road to Rome skirted the northern edge of Massico Ridge.

The Eighth Army also advanced on the Adriatic coast, establishing another bridgehead on the Trigno River.

The largest raid by heavy American bombers originating from Britain took place on northwestern Germany this date. Speculation ran that the contingent numbered around 500, based on the previous month's two record-breaking raids numbering 400 American bombers.

The Red Army swept west of the Crimea to within thirty miles of Kherson at the mouth of the Dneiper estuary on the Black Sea.

Hal Boyle finds the WAC's in North Africa to be the troops exhibiting the best morale, better than the male soldiers. Everyone from General Eisenhower down to the ordinary foot soldier appeared to agree with the assessment. He focuses on one Sgt. Doris Callahan, just "Callahan" to the press corps over whom she rode herd.

They didn't call her "Dirty Doris".

Russell Brines, A.P. correspondent interned by the Japanese in Manila and Shanghai for nearly two years and recently returned as part of a prisoner exchange, reports that Japanese morale remained high despite tremendous hardships on the home front. The average Japanese citizen was said to be prepared to endure the deprivations of war for yet another five years, to go with the more than six years since the start of the war in China.

Raymond Cronin, another A.P. correspondent also interned by the Japanese in the Philippines for nearly two years, reports that observers returning from Japan indicated that Japanese militarists were convinced that the war was being lost and that some honorable peace might yet be obtained. Meanwhile, the people of Japan were being fed propaganda and kept in the dark from reports of the manifold losses being suffered by the Japanese military in the Pacific.

Japanese militarists in the field were attempting to effect brotherhood among Asian peoples in the hope that dividends might be paid them 25 years hence with a war against the white races.

Helter-Skelter.

Nearly a half million coal miners continued on strike as members of the Interior Department, including former Undersecretary Abe Fortas, on special leave from the Navy, met with John L. Lewis and UMW's district presidents to try to resolve the impasse, form a new contract, and return the seized mines back to the coal companies.

Governor Thomas Dewey of New York proclaimed that he was not a candidate for the 1944 Republican presidential nomination and foresaw no possibility that he would be the nominee of the party, that despite the fact that his hand-picked candidate for lieutenant governor of New York had won the previous day‘s race over the candidate favored by President Roosevelt.

The Republican National Chairman, Harrison Spangler, declared the off-year election returns, running heavily for Republicans, to have spelled the "death blow" to any fourth term hope for FDR. He predicted a Republican president and a Republican Congress in 1944 "to get our country back on the American road".

Apparently, it was moving too close to the autobahn for Mr. Spangler.

On the editorial page, "No Boogeys" relates that a survey in Fortune had found that most of the American people still favored President Roosevelt for election in 1944. If the war were ended in the meantime, however, they would likely choose an alternative, presumed to be Wendell Willkie.

The Boogeys revealed by the survey as most threatening to the people were the most illuminating part of the report, say the piece. In order, they were Jews, big businessmen and the rich, labor groups, and politicians. Among individuals, only John L. Lewis was listed as a major menace to the country, named by 70% of respondents. President Roosevelt was next, named by only 5%.

Save for that response for Lewis, the relatively low percentages recording the various group menaces, however, caused the editorial to conclude that the American people were not in the business of hating in these days of war. They were not so Fascist as some had maintained but were behaving rationally.

"Crack-Down" deplores the continuing arrogance of the coal miners to place their own personal gains ahead of the war effort, and expresses the fervent hope that the President would continue government operation of the mines this time until the crisis had passed. It suggests that American opinion, decidedly against the position taken by the miners, would ultimately be turned against the gains made by Labor in general should the unjust strike, in defiance of the no-strike pledge made in 1942 by Labor leaders, continue.

"Milk Prices" asserts that Governor Broughton follow the pattern of Colorado's governor and raise milk prices on his own, pursuant to the broad emergency powers provided the governor during the war. The dairymen were suffering with prices at 17 per quart and could scarcely make a profit with labor costs and feed prices shooting through the roof. If OPA was not going to save the milk farmers by allowing a rise in prices, then the Governor ought.

"Real Control" offers that another cut in liquor rationing had caused a de facto type of prohibition. Even bootleg whiskey was of an inferior grade, with the still's ordinary contents, sugar, grain, corn, etc., also heavily rationed or too expensive to enable profit.

The piece predicts in conclusion that one of the primary post-war aims would be a return to drink.

What do you think, Loonigan?

Drew Pearson suggests that Prime Minister Churchill, who opposed shipping food to occupied countries out of fear that it would fall into the hands of the Nazis, may have exerted a hidden hand, through the White House and State Department, in limiting hearings on the proposal to ship private food via the Red Cross to France, Belgium, and Holland, following a pattern established to send food to Greece.

Former President Hoover was scheduled to be heard before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on the issue. Previously, former Secretary of the Navy during World War I and Ambassador to Mexico from 1933-41, Josephus Daniels, and former Undersecretary of State Sumner Welles had been scheduled also to be heard by the Committee. Suddenly, however, their appearances had been canceled, apparently pursuant to word passed from the White House and the State Department.

Mr. Pearson also relates that the Dies Committee, about to release a dry report on subversive Nazi and Japanese groups which had operated in the country with impunity prior to Pearl Harbor, was finding the going tough to obtain funding for continued examination of Un-american activities. There was nothing sensational for the Dies Committee to dig up these days.

Finding Communist influence among blacks in the country had been deemed by Mr. Dies to inflammatory to risk in light of the Harlem and Detroit riots during June, reports Mr. Pearson.

Dorothy Thompson opines that the agreement reached in the Moscow Conference, regardless of subsequent military developments in the war and the timing of the second front in Europe, would shorten the war. Her reasoning was based on the fact that the agreement had put to rest the prospect of a separate peace between Germany and Russia, thus spelling the end of any hope by Hitler that he might be able to split the Allies in two. The German High Command had therefore now been given notice that Hitler could not pull the rabbit out of the hat again as at Munich.

The war was hopeless, the realization of which had now to be manifest to the German people and the German generals. Continuation of the war, she therefore concludes, was an act tantamount to national suicide for Germany.

Moreover, the agreement, signed by a representative of China, gave Russia's tacit recognition of China as the pre-eminent power in the Far East, without deference any longer to Russia's mutual non-aggression pact with Japan. Thus, it put Japan on notice that the jig was up politically for it as well, that it could no longer rely on Russia’s hesitation to join the Allied effort in the Pacific.

Samuel Grafton echoes the sentiment expressed by Ms. Thompson, finding the Moscow agreement to void forever the Munich Pact, representing a new direction in American and British foreign policy, vowing close working relations during and after the war with Russia.

He believes that the agreement had given new meaning to the Connally Resolution pending before the Senate, that the resolution was informed now by all the concepts embraced within the Moscow accords.

In short, the Moscow agreement had laid the initial foundations internationally for what became the United Nations organization after the war.