Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that the First Ukrainian Army of Nikolai Vatutin had taken Olevsk and Novograd-Volynsky, plunging across the old Polish border, still, however, 150 miles from the Polish border at the Bug River established in 1939. Regardless, the Soviets were now within 370 miles of the German border, a third of the total distance from Stalingrad which the armies of Russia had accomplished during the previous thirteen and a half months.

The southern wing of the Army moved forward from captured Dzerzhinsk, 35 miles south of Zhitomir.

The Nazis were surrendering by whole companies along an 80-mile front, after 6,000 Germans had been killed in the previous day’s fighting.

With the old Polish border breached, the State Department, indicated Secretary Hull, was considering bringing together the Soviets and the Polish government-in-exile, at odds with the Soviets since the revelation in late April, 1943 by the Nazis of the discovery near Smolensk of the mass grave of 10,000 Polish officers, alleged to have been massacred by the Russians--denied at the time, but subsequently confirmed by the Soviet Government under Mikhail Gorbachev as part of glasnost.

An American bombing raid had taken place on the "rocket-gun" coast of France at Pas-de-Calais, while RAF Mosquitos attacked undisclosed targets in Western Germany. There were no losses reported from either raid, the result, no doubt, of German air defenses concentrating on Berlin, reeling from the tenth large attack on the city on Sunday night. That raid had left the new Reichschancellery in ruins, as fires were observed raging from the wreckage.

This time, unlike 1933, there was no doubt as to who started those fires.

In Italy, soggy conditions limited fighting, as bombing of targets in Northern Italy continued.

In the Pacific, American carrier planes had on New Year's Day sunk two Japanese cruisers and a destroyer at Kavieng on New Ireland, while shooting down 33 enemy planes at Kavieng and at Rabaul on New Britain.

In Yugoslavia, Marshal Tito's Partisans had undertaken on New Year’s Eve a new offensive against the town of Banjaluka, requiring the Nazis to bring up reinforcements of the Second German Tank Army to try to resist the attack. Bitter house-to-house fighting was ongoing. Allied officers, it was reported, were now leading many of the Partisan divisions.

And the Kentucky weed market was booming.

Oh no, not that. "Weed" referred to burley leaf in those days.

William Worden reported on an Hawaiian Lion's Club meeting in Hilo. One gentleman was late and suffered a ten-cent fine, another having to pay fifty cents for failing to give up his ticket. Others were congratulated on their birthdays, while still others helped blind guests at the event. An Hawaiian hula group sang songs.

The meeting concluded with the singing of the Hawaiian National Anthem, "Hawaii Ponoi", which has the lyric:

Hawaii Po-no-i Na-na-i Kou-moi
Ka-la-ni Ali-i, Ke Ali-i,
Ma-ku-a La Ni-e, Kamehameha-e
Na-ka Na-e Pa-le, Me-ka-i-ne.

The song is not part of the canon easily translatable to English, being a song of songs.

Meaning no disrespect either to the Lion's Club or Hawaii, nor, for reasons we leave unstated for the purpose of discretion, could we, without doing undue offense to past personal relationships of enduring endearing merit, we shall have to content ourselves, being nearly asleep tonight, with this Anglicized version.

On the editorial page, "Unamerican" finds the report of 90 separate attacks on Jews or Jewish organizations in New York to be representative of a dangerous anti-Semitic trend growing in the country and one which could rend the country in half at a time when the nation fought a war in Europe, in part to liberate the Continent from anti-Semitism.

"Miracle" underscores the vast scope of the Russian achievement since the beginning of the November, 1942 offensive out of Stalingrad, having forced Germans from all Russian territory along an 800-mile strip, down to about a 100-mile wide area, about the size of England and Scotland.

"Accusers" presents statistics belying the gauntlets laid down by William Green of the AFL and Philip Murray of the CIO in challenge to General Marshall's contention that Labor strife had slowed considerably the war effort. During the period 1939 through 1941, fully 82 million man-days of work, points out the piece, had been lost from strikes. Since 1941, while figures were not yet compiled, the trend had continued. Based on the figures for the previous month, the number of man-days which would be lost in 1944 at the same rate would amount to fully 35.9 million man-days. It was thus only logical to conclude that General Marshall was correct.

Dorothy Thompson challenges Postmaster General Frank Walker's decision to ban Esquire from the mails, as discussed on Saturday and in November by the editorial column. The ban actually was limited to preventing the magazine from enjoying the postage status of ordinary publications, for its alleged failure to provide proper reading material.

Ms. Thompson finds the excuse trivial and absurd, given the list of established writers who contributed to the magazine, from D. H. Lawrence to John Steinbeck, even including the late Thomas Wolfe.

She then moves to the real problem, the Vargas Girls being semi-naked on the pages of the magazine. She finds that equally absurd as an argument, as the images were well-drawn and demonstrated artistic merit.

One of the problems asserted as justification for the ban by General Walker was the use of the word "backside", which he deemed offensive.

She compares his censorship to that of Hitler who had during the 1930's demanded that all German artists refrain from painting green skies and blue meadows, on penalty of sterilization.

Well, the airmen chose to make light of this situation by using some of the lude, prurient, lurid backside drawings on their bombers.

Some examples:

Sorry, cube-ladies auxiliary of U.N.C., but even your great-grandmothers were apparently more liberated than you, 67 years ago. No one, it appears, not even the W.C.T.U., complained about the Nose Art--even if some of it might have been subject to being classified as a little Bozarty, especially that on the B-25's--, save Postmaster General Frank Walker, at least as to the more tame versions which had appeared in Esquire. Wire General Walker of your complaints re the hockey team's buxom lass.

Oh, he's dead? Right. Well, then, try Ms. Palin.

What's that? Oh, they were fighting a war, and, likely as not, would not return from each bombing mission. We see. That's different. We stand corrected. The latter-day counterparts not facing battle are just a bunch of Animals objectifying human flesh for the sake of puerile gratification. Why, it is perfectly clear then that you young ladies each were of virgin birth, without any sexual gratification or stimulation involved in the least in obtaining your existence on the planet. We shall just follow your lead and banish all forms of sexual gratification and stimulation. That will show those bastards, as well the broads who pose for them. You young ladies keep up the good work. It is inspirational.

By the way, point of clarification in your thought processes, given to too much kitsch phraseology without any thought at all in what you are saying. What you mean is that you are subjectifying the artwork to read into it something dirty or demeaning. That is your subjectification of the drawing which, itself, stands aloof from anything except that which your individual mind perceives and engrafts upon it as an interpretation.

The objectifying of the drawing is an entirely different matter. The objectifying of the model posing for the drawing, assuming it to have been a real person, cannot, in truth, exist, at least to the rational mind, for the very reason that the viewer is seeing a visual image of the person, not the actual person. The viewer who becomes unduly fixated on nudity is ignoring the fact that all objects in visual media are treated similarly by the mind, if truly objectified. It is only upon the subjectification of the image that one becomes involved with the image and projects onto it emotions or reactions involving attraction or repulsion, or is simply motivated, more or less autonomically, by the image to achieve sexual arousal from viewing it, much as the subject of the image, or someone resembling the image, might so motivate if viewed in reality.

Learn to distinguish those thoughts and the language and ideas of subjectification from objectification and you will be on your way to recovery from your mental disorder, born of feelings of sexual and physical inadequacy, born of misperceptions of the world about you, born of a failure to think rather than react emotionally, having nothing at all to do with the cube drawings or any other representations of nudity, or semi-nudity, whether in a photographic or purely graphic medium, and certainly having nothing to do with what you label loosely as "sexist", of which, in fact, there is no such thing with any meaning attached to it which is definable. It is a useless and vacuous term for vacuous minds, whether used by vacuous, and often quite hypocritical, males or females, those who as parents are likely to produce the worst of murderers and rapists in fact, or other persons who commit untoward acts. How someone reacts to a recording, a drawing or photograph or moving picture is purely subjective, and, as long as law-abiding in the reaction, purely their own damned business, not yours. To suggest that photographs or other media involving nudity or language you deem foul have some interconnection with sexual crime or any other sort of crime is ludicrous. There is no such proof, nor any which could reliably be obtained logically, should you consider it. You follow, in believing that, the last self-serving statements of a lunatic, uttered to a minister, just before he was executed, seeking to lay blame for his own heinous crimes on some external medium--namely Theodore Bundy. He, ladies, would wholly agree with you. Perpend.

Moreover, why do you hate representations of women with large breasts? Think about that also. It is simply a part of nature and its effort to keep life from being boringly uniform, as the Fascists and Hitler sought to achieve--and plenty of men enjoy all types, just as women appear to enjoy all types of men, not just beefcakes and "hunks" with nice backsides, you discriminating, disgraceful, slutty sexist pig, you.

In truth, most people, after emerging from adolescence or post-adolescence, do not any longer focus on physical typology as much as they do the whole person, even if it is an undeniable fact of human nature that physical appearance usually forms the basis for initial attraction or repulsion, which, in turn, may become the basis for the opposite reaction over a protracted period, after getting to know a person more closely than the ephemeral gauge of initial titillation, or, as the case may be, tintinnabulation, provides.

Drew Pearson reports of U.S. officials of the Food Distribution Administration questioning a Soviet demand for lump sugar instead of granulated. Came back the reply that on the cold Russian front, the soldiers took tea regularly and had the traditional Russian habit of sucking the tea through a lump of sugar held between their teeth.

They also wanted American butter, not oleo, as butter cost three times more and thus had to be three times as good.

They got both their sugar cubes and their butter.

Samuel Grafton eschews the swinging pendulum theory of American politics, that the sway was to one party, then inevitably back to the other. He sees it as, instead, a spiral staircase, allowing movement right or left, sometimes up, sometimes falling back.

Raymond Clapper, setting off on his last journey, to cover the war in the Pacific, describes his transcontinental flight from Washington to San Francisco, just taking a few hours now, putting him down at the Bohemian Club in the city the day after leaving the nation's capital. At the San Francisco airport, after stops in Toledo and Cheyenne, he saw geraniums and calla lilies in bloom.

No indication, however, appeared that he was kissed by a sad-eyed lady with flowers in her hair.

Emory Land, chairman of the Maritime Commission, testified before the Truman Committee that only 75 to 80% of the defects found in the quickly constructed Liberty ships could be corrected. Some were so poorly constructed with stresses locked up in their hulls that they actually broke in half.

Rosie, you did a fine job, gal, under emergent conditions. But, dear, let's not get carried away come peacetime and suddenly think, maybe, that you are a steelworker by trade and move on to the bridges and skyscrapers of the country.

Eleventh Day of Christmas: Eleven reapers peeping.

Fie, fie on all tired jades, on all mad masters, and
all foul ways! Was ever man so beaten? was ever
man so rayed? was ever man so weary? I am sent
before to make a fire, and they are coming after to
warm them. Now, were not I a little pot and soon
hot, my very lips might freeze to my teeth, my
tongue to the roof of my mouth, my heart in my
belly, ere I should come by a fire to thaw me: but
I, with blowing the fire, shall warm myself; for,
considering the weather, a taller man than I will
take cold. Holla, ho! Curtis.