Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that tens of thousands of American troops of the Sixth Army, led by General MacArthur, and under the immediate command of General Walter Krueger, had the day before landed from an 800-ship convoy stretching seventy miles, at Lingayen Gulf on western Luzon, and began moving rapidly toward Manila less than 120 miles away. Lingayen was regarded as the Back Door to Manila.

Twenty-four hours after the initial landings at 9:30 Tuesday morning, troops were still pouring ashore against only light enemy opposition, enduring light losses. General MacArthur personally waded ashore with the men. He had returned not only to the Philippines but now to Luzon, as promised in March, 1942 when he departed Corregidor.

The landing front stretched fifteen miles along Lingayen Gulf and the quickly established beachhead extended from Lingayen City eastward to San Fabian.

It was estimated that as many as 350,000 men were involved in the operation and that it was the largest amphibious landing in military history.

The landings were effected with relative ease, without the booby traps and mines encountered in the initial landings on Leyte on October 20. Some of the Japanese defenders were so frustrated that they swam out to the ships and tossed grenades at the sides, ineffectually.

The Japanese had in December, 1941 accomplished the 120 miles to Manila in just ten days after landing at Lingayen on December 22, but few military observers held out the hope for that kind of rapid advance for the American landing forces because of the heavy defenses built up by the Japanese during the interim three years.

Correspondent Yates McDaniel provided a firsthand account of the landings, said that the troops were greeted primarily by smiling Filipinos, not enemy. Few Japanese likewise had been killed during the landings. There was simply no organized resistance to be found, only a handful of snipers. A Filipino boy explained that the previous night, hearing that the Americans were coming, the Japanese fled inland.

Heavy equipment for carving supply roads was already being unloaded onto the beaches by the LST's.

Tokyo radio reported that three B-29's had dropped incendiary bombs on the Japanese capital during the night.

On the Bulge line, the First Army won the largest tank battle yet of the campaign, capturing Samree, following 30 hours of violent fighting in deep snow, including an all night artillery barrage.

To the south of the Bulge line, the Third Army of General Patton gained up to a mile and a half along the 20-mile front above Bastogne. The Screaming Eagles of the 101st Airborne Division, who had been primarily responsible for holding Bastogne during Christmas week, moved to within 4.5 miles of Houffalize near the center of the Bulge.

The Germans continued their withdrawal from the western tip of the Bulge, hampered now measurably by the loss of Samree, where several roads intersected. The enemy was making little or no attempt to fight during this withdrawal.

The British Second Army gained up to 3.5 miles, overrunning numerous Belgian towns, including Ambly, four miles east of Rochefort. The troops moved five miles in the west to within a half mile of La Roche, which was bypassed.

In the diversionary attack sector in Alsace, the Germans moved to within ten miles south of Strasbourg, while hard fighting took place nine miles to the north of the city.

Amid snow and ice, another raid in support of the Western Front took place, consisting of 1,100 heavy bombers, supported by 300 fighters, striking with 4,000 tons of bombs behind the Belgian Bulge line and along the Rhine, at Cologne, Karlsruhe, and in the vicinity of Bonn. The Luftwaffe had been largely inactive since New Year's Day when they had lost 363 planes trying to defend the Bulge line.

Norwegian paratroops were dropped between Trondheim and Oslo over German positions in Norway in the Dovre Mountains and southeast through Osterdal. The Germans were seeking to transfer eight divisions from Norway to the Western Front and this operation promised to cause that movement to be diverted to the sea where the British Navy and the RAF could hammer away.

The Russians were increasing the intensity of the fight within Budapest as the Germans had failed in their attempted breakthrough from the northwest to rescue the trapped garrison defending the city. The Germans had lost 500 tanks in the attempt since January 2. The Russians were still advancing toward Komaron, having gained three more miles to Izsa, 3.5 miles east of the German supply base.

In Italy, the British drove the Germans from the south bank of the Reno River.

Undersecretary of War Robert Patterson informed that 900,000 men would be inducted into the armed services during the first half of 1945.

Representative Sabath of Illinois found it a "damnable disgrace" that cocktail lounges around Washington were filled to the brim with Army officers, demanded forthwith an investigation of use of Army manpower. Many of them had no foreign service stripes on their uniforms. The Chairman of the House Rules Committee thus wanted to see that these officers were reassigned and that girls and messenger boys be appointed to perform their light duty.

On the editorial page, "A Big Hand" reports of the British approval of President Roosevelt's State of the Union message the previous Saturday, finding it courageous and forthright. Britons had been subject to a national service act since almost the beginning of the war in 1939. Perhaps, the British saw the war at closer range than Americans and thus appreciated the need for that sacrifice more readily.

"Drifting Apart" observes that the bickering between the Allies was becoming ever more prevalent as the days passed on in the war. The Russian and American press were now bickering over the political outlook of Pope Pius XII, who had advocated that both victors and vanquished alike in the war would deserve equal rights in the long run, a message which had angered Pravda.

"Not Uninviting" finds again, as in the fall, that the presence in North Carolina of lower local taxes offset somewhat higher state tax rates than neighboring states, and, in combination, stood the state in good stead in terms of attracting industry. North Carolina government, state and local, it finds, was the picture of stability.

"Wrong Answer" addresses Monday's 5 to 4 Supreme Court decision in Thomas v. Collins, 323 US 516, striking down as unconstitutional a Texas law which had required registration for union organizers before engaging in any form of solicitation for union membership.

The piece asks rhetorically whether it meant that five members of the Court liked labor and four did not, answers that it was not likely the case. The majority based its ruling on a determination that the Texas law infringed speech and assembly, and thus violated the First Amendment. The minority had found that the law merely regulated union activity, not speech. The majority meanwhile recognized the right of the state generally to regulate conduct of union organizing, such as the collection of fees or solicitation for subscriptions, but not pure speech.

The editorial comes out on the side of free speech, as did the majority, and further offers that the law should never have been passed in the first instance. Union practices were in need of regulation, but there was no basis for restricting speech and other legitimate peroration in a free nation, merely because the speaker belonged to a union organization.

"Wisdom and Wit" at the bottom of the column has two letter entries, both from the Mayor of New York in 1912, William Jay Gaynor, to his constituents.

Drew Pearson discusses the President's insistence that Italy be fed better, having in late October, after enduring frustrating delay in the shipment of food, ordered British General Sir Henry Maitland Wilson to increase the food ration to civilians in Southern Italy to 300 grams. Rations had been stinted because of the need for layaway of supplies for Northern Italy when the day would come of Allied occupation of the region. But the President had decided that too much was being made of that contingency and so ordered the increase out of the stored provisions. Thus far, however, General Wilson had not implemented the changes.

Charles Halleck of Indiana was disposed to go along with that plan, but House Minority Leader Joe Martin of Massachusetts was not up to it, said that the rest of the Republican members of the House would balk. He told Mr. Brownell that, "We have been out of office so long that they like to take a sock at the President any time they get a chance."

Samuel Grafton warns that the Republicans could not hope for long to play both ends against the middle in the new Congress, preserving their traditional role as defender of civil rights for blacks while also sidling up to the likes of Representative John Rankin of Mississippi, an avowed segregationist and racist, in making permanent the Dies Committee on Un-American Activities.

Marquis Childs reports of the mass transfer of 55,000 American Air Force personnel into the infantry because of the needs to supply the fight on the Western Front and the lighter than expected losses among airmen. The news had anguished many parents but war needs superseded the sentiment of those pressing the flowers in the books back home.

Hal Boyle reports from Belgium on January 7 that the Germans had managed only two major breakthroughs of American lines during the entire war. The first had been at Kasserine Pass in Tunisia in February, 1943, and now the Ardennes offensive in December. In both cases, the drives were launched with precision and were halted only by the arrival of last ditch troops. Both nearly accomplished the goal of dividing the Allied forces. Both had been launched through weak positions.

A letter writer has his Irish up over an editorial which had in passing described William and Mary as "benign". Benign to whom, he asks. Not the Irish. Many men had died, he did confide, for sporting on St. Pat's Day the orange.