Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that the Red Army had driven to within 50 miles of the 1940 Rumanian border at the Prut River by capturing the highway leading west from Soroki in Bessarabia, in the meantime conquering two Rumanian divisions which had been thrown into the gap of the Nazi defense line for resistance.

The Russians were bringing tanks and heavy artillery in force across the Dniester via pontoons captured from the Germans.

General Gregory Zhukov's First Ukrainian Army to the north had come within sight of the city of Brody, bringing it within 57 miles of Lwow, within the 1940 Polish border.

German troops, during the early morning darkness, had retaken the Continental Hotel in Cassino. Nazi Lt. General Richard Heidrich, commanding officer of the First German Paratroop Division, had boasted that he intended to retake Cassino from the Allies. The hotel was of key importance to both sides as it blocked the Allied path into and through the heavily defended southwest corner of the town, still held by the Germans. German reinforcements, some brought down the hillside from Monte Cassino, had been brought in to fortify the critical corner, still forbidding unimpeded access by the Allies to critical Highway 6, leading northwest to Rome. The New Zealand troops had thus renewed their task of seeking to take back the hotel. They had exploded, while in possession of it, two tanks which the Nazis had placed in the lobby.

Edward Kennedy and Richard Massock both report separately as eyewitnesses on the slowly encroaching lava flows of Mt. Vesuvius, moving initially at a rate of 40 mph, destroying everything before it and exciting fear in Italians in its path greater than even that of the war. The lava had already engulfed two villages, San Sebastian and Massa Di Somma. The 200-yard wide stream slowed as it moved down the mountain toward evacuated Cercola. Thus far, there had been no casualties, as U.S. Army trucks aided in the evacuation of all threatened villages. Twelve thousand people had been displaced from their homes and lost their dwellings, orchards, and vineyards. It was now rated the worst eruption since 1872.

Vesuvius has remained quiet since the 1944 eruption.

The State Department angrily denied rumors that it had any intent to deal diplomatically with Vichy after France was liberated. The only intent of the United States, the statement continued, was to liquidate Vichy.

A hundred thousand German and Rumanian troops had been poured into Hungary to police the occupation begun the day before, as a Nazi puppet government was installed to replace that of Admiral Nicholas Horthy, believed to be under house arrest in Germany. The Russians were within a hundred miles of the expanded borders of Hungary at Tarnopol, within 125 miles as they approached Lwow, and 150 miles away at their positions in Bessarabia.

In Northeast Burma, Gurkha and Kachin native troops, together with Chinese, under the command of General Joseph Stilwell, took the important communications center at Sumprabum.

The Japanese continued westward toward Imphal in India after their crossing of the Chindwin River at several points, as reported the previous day. One column had been engaged by the Allies and fighting was ongoing. The advance consisted also of a second prong in the Chin Hills, 150 miles to the southwest. Two Japanese thrusts there, one in strength, had been resisted by the Allies north of Tiddim.

The communique expressed the eagerness of the Allied forces to encounter Japanese strength in this area. Indeed, very shortly, two key battles in the Burma campaign would begin in the region, at Imphal and Kohima in India. They were to be part of a general Japanese invasion of India, codenamed "U Go". U Go, after three months of fighting with heavy losses on both sides, unceremoniously got up and went.

At Imphal, the Allies, comprised mostly of Indian troops and British commanders, would suffer 17,500 casualties, while the Japanese would lose nearly 54,000 men.

John Moroso, III, in the "Reporter's Notebook" column, tells of a canary onboard a shelled British warship, losing all its feathers in the shelling. It yet survived, if shivering its timbers since. The sailors onboard kept the bird warm in the hope that it might sprout anew after its premature molt.

He next provides a quick impression of Admiral Harold Stark, commander in chief of the Navy in Europe. His singular advice to newsmen was not to play the canary by trying to discern when and where the invasion of the Continent would take place.

Though Mr. Moroso does not say so, should any journalist have so done, no doubt, he, too, would have suffered an early molting, and likely met with an unfortunate accident as one of the spindrifts came up over the deck, in keeping with traditional stark weather fashion.

In Manhattan, jury selection was proceeding in the trial of Wayne Lonergan for the slaying of his estranged wife in late October, with half the jury selected. From eighteen "special talesmen" were selected two salesmen and a phone company executive to join three other members already seated. This quarter of the jury seemed to be, without anyone batting an eye, representative of the salesmen of Manhattan.

Next up, no doubt, would be a venire comprised of hatters, then haberdashers, and, to provide balance, would come the cross-dressers, followed, of course, to complement the lumber salesman selected, the lumberjack venire, all part of the talesmen twice-told.

Elsewhere among the six million stories in the Naked City, a messenger was walking along Park Avenue, whereupon he spotted two glistening pearls embedded within the slush of the snow, reached to pick them up and found attached to them a strand of 63 pearls, all neatly strung in a row. He notified police who located the owner, a woman who indicated she had apparently dropped her uninsured double-strand of 88 matched pearls worth $20,000. Now, she had a single strand of 63 matched pearls worth…?

But where were the oysters who produced them? Did someone eat those? If so, who? Who ate the other 25 pearls?

On the editorial page, "East-West" remarks on the observation of a candidate from Mecklenburg County for State Auditor who found that 80 percent of the constitutional positions in state government were held by persons from four Eastern North Carolina counties. That the Western half of the state was the more populous and prosperous had little impact on this antiquated system of geographical deference, with the East getting the lion's share of representation in state executive offices.

The piece wishes the candidate well in his campaign, finds the notion worthy but probably doomed to defeat as few showed signs of anything but apathy toward the traditional system, which included a change of governors every four years, originating alternately from the East or the West.

"The Japs" finds the advice of Commander Melvyn McCoy, escaped prisoner from a Japanese prisoner of war camp, that the Japanese as a people, including American citizens of Japanese heritage, should be dealt with harshly after the war, essentially exterminated or placed in a mass concentration camp guarded by the Chinese, to be the product of a vision skewed by harsh personal experience and not one which would be sound to follow. Such treatment of the Japanese would only beget hatred and eventually another war. After the Japanese war criminals were dealt with, it recommends mercy to the people and integration of Japan into the body of nations.

It would be the policy followed, and with the desired results.

"New Course" finds hope in the movement gradually of the State Department toward a position of non-support of the Badoglio Government, allowing it only provisional status until Rome could be liberated and the people thereafter could exercise their free choice democratically of a new government.

It also finds hopeful the slow movement toward recognition of General Charles De Gaulle as the leader of the Free French and heir apparent to leadership of liberated France when its day would come.

The sooner the two things could be accomplished, elimination of Badoglio and recognition fully of De Gaulle, the better the message would be sent to Europe that the Allies intended to free Europe on its own terms, and not impose a military will embracing old Fascists as leaders, on the expedient that they could restore and preserve order for the purpose of occupation and policing against underground revolution.

"A Meeting" speaks of rumors of a prospective new conference between Stalin, Churchill, and Roosevelt to iron out post-war policy issues not considered in November-December at Tehran and Cairo. With events moving swiftly now, the Wehrmacht beset with utter devastation in the Ukraine and the coming Red storm through Rumania and Poland, being bombed relentlessly at home by the combined air forces of the Allies, and being held in check in Italy, such a meeting was needed as German surrender might come at any time.

The rumor was misplaced. There would be no further meeting of the Big Three until the Yalta Conference of the following February, the last such meeting before the death of FDR on April 12. Prime Minister Churchill would meet with FDR in Quebec in September and with Stalin in Moscow in October. But FDR would not attend the Moscow Conference, primarily dealing with post-war East-West division of territorial oversight in Europe.

Dorothy Thompson reports of the urging by King Gustav V of Sweden that Finland capitulate to the terms offered by Russia for armistice rather than suffer the inevitable result of probable occupation by Russia through force. This advice was not completely altruistic, as Russian forceful occupation would mean that Russia would become the border-lord of Sweden.

Finland had once been part of Sweden until 1809, and its land-owning class still was comprised primarily of Swedes. The annexation by Russia of Karelia after the 1939-40 Russo-Finnish war had caused the displacement of 400,000 refugee peasants into the other unoccupied areas of Finland, precipitating a land crisis with the barons who would have been required to give up part of their holdings to accommodate the refugees.

After the Nazi invasion of Russia in mid-1941 and German military support of Finland against incursion by Russia, Russia was forced to withdraw from Karelia, alleviating that crisis for the nonce.

But, a forceful invasion by Russia of Finland would stir the pot even hotter in terms of such refugee migrations and consequent need for land reform, ultimately to result in imposition of socialist doctrine such that the landowning classes would be forced to disgorge their holdings to the state.

Ms. Thompson thus supports King Gustav's advice, unencumbered with contingencies, and counsels the United States, thus far only willing to tell Finland to dissociate from Germany, to do likewise. In so doing, it would divorce Finland from its illusory hope that the United States might intervene and stop Russia from any aggression once the terms of surrender had been conclusively rejected.

The front page reported that Finland had reaffirmed its stance not to accept the terms of surrender without further clarification by Russia. It added that it desired to maintain the peace. The handwriting appeared thus on the wall.

Samuel Grafton finds truth an orphan in Washington in recent times, given way to useless platitudes or dodged by such time-worn phrases as "states' rights" as an obscurantist fence against its encroachment. He cites the year-long discussion on food subsidies as Exhibit A, examined from every platitudinous stance, but leaving out along the way any factual discussion of whether the policy actually served its purpose of keeping prices down and preventing inflation.

So he found out from testimony before the Senate Banking and Currency Committee by Price Administrator Chester Bowles that food subsidies had, in the previous eleven months, kept inflation stagnant.

That was a fact; that was truth. The rest, says Mr. Grafton, was inimical to democracy.

Marquis Childs comments on the situation in Ireland, recalling his trip the previous year from Foynes to London across the lush green landscape of the poets and singers, romanticized by the United States and for good reason. But now, the realities of war intruded on the romance.

Eire would not relinquish its position of neutrality and expel the German and Japanese legations of diplomats and thereby rid itself of the primary source of espionage activity ongoing against Britain and Northern Ireland. While all traffic between Eire and England had been stopped, it was impossible completely to seal the border with Ulster because of the daily commute of workers across the border.

Prime Minister Eamon De Valera had declared that he had jailed all twelve of the espionage agents, including five Germans who parachuted into Eire. But Mr. Childs expresses incredulity at the notion that such a small number represented all of the espionage taking place in such a fruitful source for the Germans after four and a half years of war.

Eire had also jailed 400 members of the I.R.A. suspected of subversive activity, inimical to both Eire and Great Britain. But, likewise, Mr. Childs finds this number hardly representative of the spies at work in the country.

The only way to rid Eire of spies was for it to declare for the Allies and expel the Germans and Japanese, just as should have been the case with the Japanese present in Honolulu prior to the attack on Pearl Harbor.

Drew Pearson discusses a Dutch agent seeking to re-establish the Dutch monopoly on quinine after the war, that taken away by the Japanese in their occupation of the Dutch East Indies in early 1942. The Dutch were hard at work trying to buy up all of the quinine interests being developed in Latin America as alternative to insure supply of the badly needed hedge against malaria for the troops in the Pacific war theater. The U.S. Government was equally determined to stop the Dutch monopoly after the war.

He next turns to the need of even House Ways & Means Committee Chairman Bob Doughton for assistance with his tax return. Albert Einstein was not alone.

Lastly, he examines again the flak hurled at Secretary of Commerce Jesse Jones for his venture in loaning, interest-free, 68.5 million dollars of taxpayer money to Alcoa to build a plant in Canada, which had produced so much aluminum that a surplus had developed, threatening American producers, such as Reynolds, with loss of their business. The American producers, forced to pay interest on government loans for war production, could not compete with the sweetheart deal provided the Canadian venture. If America stopped taking the aluminum from the Canadian plant, then the investment would be undermined. But if it continued, American companies would suffer. It was a dilemma.

And a news piece indicates the Senate's request of the FCC that it submit draft legislation to the Congress to force James Caesar Petrillo, head of the American Federation of Musicians, to desist in his ban on high school musicians and other amateurs playing on the radio lest he pull the plug on all union musicians.

His ban of union musicians recording music for jukeboxes was under study by the War Labor Board, and until that investigation was complete, legislation against that ban had been placed on hold.