Site Ed. Note: The front page and inside page report that the Russians had reached the Oder River in the Kustrin area, to move within 39 miles of Berlin. German troops had been siphoned off of the Cologne and Aachen sectors on the Western Front to try to shore up the Eastern Front, now of greater concern to the Nazi High Command.

In East Prussia, the Russians were fighting house to house within Koenigsberg, a city already bloated with 180,000 refugees. Below the city, at Elbing, the Germans were evacuating.

In Poland, Thorn, a German stronghold on the Vistula River, was captured.

The stream of refugees into Berlin from the East, now estimated at 4.5 million, continued.

On the Western Front, the First and Ninth Divisions of the First Army penetrated deeply into the Siegfried Line, at points sixteen miles east of Malmedy and nine miles southeast of Monschau, respectively. The First and Third Armies continued to strike along a 40-mile front, with the Third Army advancing 3.5 miles into Germany, within nine miles of Prum. The Our River bridgehead was widened to seven miles.

To the south, the Seventh Army and the French First Army fought into a suburb of Colmar, outflanking the town. Gambsheim was captured, relieving the stress by the enemy placed on Strasbourg from the north. The Seventh also fought into Oberhoffen, 14 miles north of Strasbourg.

On Luzon, 400 men of the Sixth Ranger Battalion made a daring raid behind Japanese lines to free 513 prisoners of war, 486 Americans, 23 British, three Netherlanders, and one Norwegian, all of the occupants of the Nueva Eeija Province prison camp on the eastern part of the island. Hundreds of the men had already died; hundreds more had been sent to labor camps in Japan. Two men died during the rescue, simply overcome from long-term weakness, but none were victims of enemy fire. The camp guards had been taken by surprise and dispatched.

The newly landed American forces of the Eighth Army had captured Subic Bay, Grande Island, and Olongapa naval base without opposition, the Japanese having abandoned the area. Units of the Seventh Fleet then entered Subic Bay. The Sixth Army had reached Calumpit, 28 miles from Manila.

The President indicated through channels that he would sign a bill divorcing the Reconstruction Finance Corporation from the Commerce Department so that Henry Wallace could be confirmed as Secretary of Commerce. Meanwhile, the nomination would languish in committee until the full Congress passed the bill. It was the only way, in the end, to assure confirmation of the nomination, opposed purely on political grounds, not the fitness of Mr. Wallace to serve in the position with or without the lending powers associated with the RFC. The conservatives in Congress simply did not want a New Deal liberal in control of the purse strings.

On the editorial page, "The Loans Trade" cautions that just because a bill to stop loan-sharking had been introduced in the Legislature, it was not to be assumed that it would necessarily become effective. Such bills had been proposed previously and were never passed. The disagreement arose when the proposed bill sought to legitimize an interest rate above 6%. Unsecured and problematic loans could not be made at 6%.

"49th State" reports that Joe Ervin, brother to Sam Ervin, had, despite his freshman status as Congressman, proposed a bill to make Alaska the 49th state of the union. It would incorporate to the country a huge amount of territory, 584,000 sq. miles, as well as 72,000 people. The piece imparts a host of facts on the territory, including that it had been bought by the U.S. from Russia in 1867 for 7.2 million dollars. The territory, which became such on May 11, 1912, less than a month after the sinking of the Titanic when it struck an iceberg in the Atlantic during its maiden crossing, presented an appealing base of expansion for the post-war era.

Alaska, of course, did become the 49th state, albeit not until 1959, just a few months before Hawaii was admitted as the 50th state.

They are states.

The Satkos must have thought so, anyway.

"Is This the End?" points to Dorothy Thompson's piece on the page predicting the end of the war in Europe within weeks. But the military leaders still were reluctant to engage in any forecasts after the Ardennes offensive.

"The Great Unwatched" tells of Cecil B. De Mille giving up his $260,000 per year salary for one dollar, which he had refused to pay to the AFL Americian Federation of Radio Artists as an assessment to fight the anti-closed-shop amendment on the ballot the prior November in California. Mr. De Mille had, in consequence, been barred from the air on his weekly radio show, for which he received $5,000 each show.

The excerpt from the Congressional Record presents a response of Senator Arthur Vandenberg of Michigan when defeated for the position of president pro tempore of the Senate. He had now been defeated four times, just as had the late Senator Key Pittman of Nevada when the Republicans controlled the chamber. But Senator Pittman had told Senator Vandenberg to keep heart, to wait until the fifth time, for it was then that Senator Pittman had been elected president pro tempore by a Democratic majority. And Senator Vandenberg's fifth time, he informed his colleagues, would come in 1946.

Drew Pearson reports on the recent conference held on Pacific relations at Hot Springs, Va. The British had favored a policy whereby Emperor Hirohito would be retained in the governing structure of post-war Japan to provide a stable environment within Japan. The former Chinese Ambassador to the United States, however, disagreed, favoring instead exile for Hirohito along with the other "discredited monarchs". Both Canada and Australia were against the proposal as well.

Dorothy Thompson urges clear thinking on the post-war disposition of Germany, as the war in Europe was about to end within any minute to several weeks. The fast advance of the Soviets toward Berlin, the loss of vital resources in Upper Silesia, and the absence of any remaining reserves in Germany, all combined virtually to assure the result soon. The railroads were blocked with refugees, prohibiting much of the movement of troops to the East from the Western Front. The Germans could not stop the stream of refugees from the East for their own propaganda had brainwashed the people into believing that if caught by the Russians, they would be exterminated or deported to Siberia. Desertions even from the SS were occurring and clashes had taken place between the Volkssturm and the SS. General panic was pervading Germany from east to west. It was, says Ms. Thompson, at long last the Gotterdammerung of Wagner.

Within the mass of refugees, identities would be lost. Even the most fanatical Nazis could intermingle with these teeming masses, disappear, and evade capture.

It would be impossible to form a new government of Germany under such chaotic conditions. Even an Allied Military Government would not be practicable before there would be first police and organization.

The only program thus far put forth to assure such order was that of the Soviets, through the 200,000 German war prisoners turned into the Free German Committee and the Union of German Officers, all de-Nazified and counter-programmed.

Marquis Childs, still in London, comments that he marveled that there had been no more friction than there was between Americans and Britons. There were still many Americans, both civilian and military, in London and elsewhere in Britain despite the fact that the greater part of the armies were now on the Continent. The Americans had twice the money in their pockets that Britons had and often brought with them foods not obtainable in Britain. Further adding to the strain, many Americans were expressing the opinion openly that they did not like Britain and longed for the time when they could return home.

Samuel Grafton finds the President's reason asserted for the nomination of Henry Wallace to Commerce, that he had been a loyal campaigner, to have been too thin for the case, as if the President were trying to put one over on the Congress and people by way of rewarding someone purely out of political motives. There was available, however, the very sensible reason that he wanted a liberal at Commerce to balance out the conservative appointments he had made at State.

A letter writer provides some doggerel on Blaze, setting forth his blazing disgust generally with the Roosevelts.

Obviously, the President was doing an exceptional job when the primary criticism against him revolved around his son's dogs, one of which gave pause in Memphis to three soldiers on furlough, leaving them then in tempus to board another plane, meanwhile to the sloggy-wog purlieus of Beale Street to watch the flow fugit, before returning perhaps to Alsace and Lorraine, the poppies of which endue, in tales of two, the foul face of pathos, wit's twin, starry name.

Another letter writer corrects a picture caption which had appeared in the newspaper, that the animal in question had been a carabao, not a caribou. A caribou, says the correspondent correctly, is a reindeer.