Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that the fighting on the Anzio beachhead during the weekend had see-sawed back and forth, but had lessened in intensity during the previous 24 hours. The British captured a bottleneck bridge over the railway west of Carroceto, while German troops re-occupied a factory east of the town. Allied air support resumed as the bad weather plaguing the latter part of the previous week had now cleared.

No ground had been lost to the German counter-attacks since the Anzio line had been pulled back by the Allies on February 3.

An air attack of the Luftwaffe had again hit an Army hospital marked with a red cross, just as two had been hit previously.

In Cassino, American troops suffered a heavy toll of casualties in gaining 200 yards up Mt. Cassino. The Benedictine Monastery at its summit was reported to be fortified and was acting as a German observation post. Consequently, there was speculation afoot that the abbey might have to be taken after all by the Allies. Previously, orders had been issued not to fire upon it.

The Pope's summer residence at Castel Gandolfo, fifteen miles south of Rome in the Alban Hills, was reported by the Allied command also to be overrun with German defenders and thus, too, had become ripe as a bombing target.

Another combined RAF and American daylight raid struck the coast of Northern France, while American bombers hit the Gilze-Rijen fighter base in Holland for the second time in a week.

A Luftwaffe raid of about 50 to 60 planes struck at London, but only fifteen made it through to the city, dropping incendiaries and causing some damage and casualties, mainly confined to the suburbs.

A 134-ton bombing raid on Rabaul, New Britain, followed another raid the previous day on Thursday of 174 tons. It was the twelfth bombing raid in the sector during the previous fourteen days.

At the conclusion of a five-day drive in northern Russia, the Red Army had cleared of Nazis the east shore of Lake Peipus, and were pushing on toward Pskov, having taken 800 towns and villages, including the rail hub at Luga. The Baltic Army was just 47 miles from Pskov, gateway to Estonia and Latvia. Fully 12,000 square miles of territory had been recaptured in just one month since the beginning of the drive from Leningrad.

In the south, the First and Second Ukrainian armies still tightened further the circle around the ten divisions of trapped Nazis at Korsun, moving to within four miles of that center of the ring.

Hal Boyle reports further on the harrowing fight taking place on the Cassino front, his report datelined February 1. Just as a line of tanks was set to go out into the draw, an incoming mortar whizzed through the trees, causing everyone to hit the ground. One man was hit, profusely bled from his left thigh. Such was life on the front.

No place was safe. The best foxhole in the camp, covered with pine logs to the point that only a small crevice enabled entry, had been struck with shrapnel a few nights earlier, killing its only occupant. Such was life on the front.

Eating breakfast from a half-track, a soldier remarked, "Jersey was never like this."

The men who normally pulled tanks from the mud had on this day rescued a stuck mule, up to its nose in mud. They had at first thought to shoot it but labored until it was free. For that, they received a case of chocolate bars. Such was life on the front.

Charlie Chaplin, nattily attired, appeared in court pursuant to his indictment in Los Angeles for violation of the Mann Act and fraud by depriving a woman of her civil rights. He stood accused of transporting 23-year old Joan Berry from Los Angeles to New York for lewd and immoral purposes, to wit, to "engage in illicit sexual relations" with the chick, or the chicken, as the silly case might have been in silly, amoral Los Angeles.

A judge in New York, who brooked no nonsense in his court, dismissed an attempted rape case against a man accused falsely by a woman. He had been convicted by a jury and sentenced to ten years, but the judge saw fit to overturn the verdict and release him.

It was obviously very clear that the woman in that case had lied, for no sooner than the judge dismissed the case, he called the woman forward and immediately had her charged with first degree perjury.

On the editorial page, "The Plot" indicates that Senator James Davis of Pennsylvania, Republican, had strode into Winston-Salem and spoken to a receptive group anent the advice to Democrats to bolt for the Republican Party in 1944, to restore States’ Rights and all the other aspects of liberty light-fingered by the New Deal.

The editorial remarks that the choice of locale was unfortunate as it allowed only a song to the choir, that if the Republicans really were serious about the effort, they should penetrate the Democratic lair, not talk to Republicans who merely voted expediently as Democrats in state elections.

But, for all that, the piece doubts there would be much defection from the Democrats in 1944.

It was right.

"Suspicion" relates of the foolish trend among the state's 3,800 primary and secondary schools, eschewing free Federal school lunches derived from surplus food stores. The reason that only 626 schools had accepted the Federal largesse appeared to be the traditional stubborn fear of a strong Federal government.

But, the farmers were happy to receive their guaranteed price floor on farm produce from the Federal government. Should the school lunch program wither too much, it could be removed from the state and, along with it, the interconnected floor on food prices which generated the Government-owned surplus of food.

The piece did not end with "Do you see?" but should have.

"Yippeeee!" celebrates in colorful patois of the South the daring exploits on the field in the Solomons of Colonel William O. Brice. Unfortunately, for our information, it gets so carried away with the patois that it forgets to tell us what precisely all the hoopla concerned.

Colonel Brice commanded the Marine Aircraft Group 11 which had distinguished itself in the fighting over Guadalcanal, on New Georgia, and now over Bougainville. The Colonel was promoted to brigadier general in 1946. He received the Distinguished Service Medal for his efforts in the fight for Guadalcanal during the latter five months of 1942.

In any event, the piece had concluded that the Rebel Yell was still afoot somehwar in them thar hills. That eerie sample of it, incidentally, which must have haunted us one eerie night in fall, 1991, and which we located back in 2006, then subsequently disappearing somewhere into the ether, is now here, at least until it decides to hippety-hop away again somewhere.

Run, ol' haya.

"Pig Boats" discusses the vitality of the U.S. submarine in both the Atlantic and Pacific, and the equal and opposite impact, diminishing to a cipher, which the Nazi U-boats in the Atlantic now were able to muster, not a single Allied ship having been reported harmed by them during the previous five weeks.

The piece speculates that Allied bombing of the U-boat nests, plus the use of small aircraft carriers and larger destroyer escorts, had neutralized the U-boats.

In the Pacific, with decreased air cover, the Japanese had to risk sending out ships to afford supplies to protect their far-flung interests and were increasingly paying the price within Davy Jones's Locker.

"Tight Reins" advocates revolution to overthrow the grossly unjust regulation by the State of North Carolina of tattoos. As of 1937, to obtain one, a person had to be 21 years of age.

Concludes the piece, it was downright unconstitutional: "Arise, ye prisoners of starvation!"

We don't know about that. Should the editors have seen today's plentiful skin coloration among youth, they likely would have considered the North Carolina Legislature on this one to be endowed with the gift of prophetic divination.

Samuel Grafton discusses the attempts of Wendell Willkie to beat Roosevelt at his own game by complaining that the President had not sought enough new taxes in the 10.5 billion dollar package he had proposed the previous year, cut to two billion by Congress. Mr. Willkie wanted 16 billion in new taxes. He also wanted more vigorous pursuit of an international post-war organization than that undertaken thus far by the Administration.

The problem, however, with Mr. Willkie's positions was that his own party vigorously opposed them, making it difficult for him to achieve the nomination. These Republicans were willing to join Southern Democrats in the Congress to achieve their goals. Thus, Mr. Willkie had to join Democrats of the opposite stripe in the Congress to achieve his goals. He understood the dilemma and, when he worked best, proceeded along that course. Occasionally, however, says Mr. Grafton, he seemed to forget the precept.

Drew Pearson now visits Chicago, having recently been to Texas, and finds Chicagoans up to their old tricks, returning to isolationism. When the United Nations Association Congress held its meeting at the Stevens Hotel, a group of hecklers with heavy German accents attempted to shout them down. Finally, it took a nun, standing and delivering an address on the benefits of post-war international peace, to dispel them such that they left the hall in frustration.

Many people across the country were now offering their two-cents worth on the post-war plans for peace. Among them was R.M. Davis, who had for much of his life worked in a mine in West Virginia, now was a coal operator. He had offered a pamphlet titled "Proposed New International Order", which, despite the author’s lack of a college degree, Mr. Pearson found engaging enough to recommend, at least as to a couple of Mr. Davis’s proposals.

But the point Mr. Pearson sought to make was that the Administration needed to get busy with its full plan for peace before too many crackpots across the country tainted the landscape with ideas having appeal to simpletons.

We note that nowhere on the page was there any mention of it being Valentine's Day. We infer from the omission that not too many people--with sons, brothers, and husbands either already dead or wounded, on the fronts daily risking death, in training to go to the fronts, or awaiting possible call-up--had in early 1944 too much in mind the red boxes of chocolates or flowers, especially possessed of the knowledge that, any day, the invasion of the Continent would begin, and, with it, the dramatic increase in American casualties.