Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that a reliable source had confided that Rudolf Hess, Heinrich Himmler, still at large, and Hermann Goering each had been included on the United Nations list of war criminals, that Admiral Karl Doenitz likewise was on the list. It was correct information.

Only Doenitz would die a free man.

Rudolf Hess would live the longest, until his suicide in Spandau Prison by hanging himself August 17, 1987. Some controversy has swirled, however, since, as to whether Hess killed himself or was murdered. He was the only remaining inmate at Spandau at the time of his death and the last of the Nazi hierarchy to die, although Hess had "escaped" from Germany to Scotland by small plane in April, 1941.

It was thought that between four and six million Germans might be forced to atone for war crimes under the plan of pool punishment recommended to the Allied governments by the War Crimes Commission in London.

Hermann Goering, in custody, spoke bitterly in Augsburg of Hitler, saying that he advised him not to attack Russia in 1941, referring him to his own Mein Kampf, advising that a two-front war was dangerous.

Goering assured that Hitler was dead. He had last seen him on Hitler's birthday, April 20, finding him then to have been a sick man, with "something wrong with his brain".

Why Herr Goering did not recognize this fault in 1941 when the Fuehrer decided to attack Russia is not made clear, unless Herr Goering shared some of the same malady, certainly possible.

Konrad Henlein, the Nazi Gauleiter of the Sudetenland, had committed suicide the previous day by slashing his wrists in a prison camp after being caught two days earlier. He had already been sentenced in absentia in 1938 to death by the Czechoslovak Government.

Following German annexation of the Sudetenland after the Munich Pact in September, 1938, Henlein had permitted Nazi troops to practice destruction of casements on the Sudetenland's fortification line, similar to the Maginot Line in France, serving as practice for the 1940 breakthrough.

Germans continued in a 4,000-square mile pocket to flee the Russian armies in Czechoslovakia, seeking surrender to the American Third Army near Pilsen. The First, Second, and Fourth Ukrainian Armies, however, had opened an advance on the Germans to encircle them after the forces had failed to surrender. They were led by Field Marshal Ferdinand Schoerner, wanted as a war criminal, and Col. General Woehler. As they were ignoring the terms of surrender, the entire force was subject to summary execution under the terms of available reprisal. Some 35,000 had surrendered Wednesday and Thursday to the First Ukrainian Army and another 20,000, to the Fourth in Bohemia. The Second attacked General Woehler's forces south of Prague, to prevent them from reaching American lines, taking 8,000 prisoners.

The Russians had liberated 6,000 American fliers and 300 RAF fliers from Stalagluft I, at Barth on the Baltic. The fleeing Germans had left the prison camp in the charge of an American prisoner.

Fanatical Luftwaffe pilots were reported to have used their last fuel to attack a concentration camp where Jews were interned.

All other Germans were said to be surrendering without a fight.

The Channel Islands of Sark, Jersey, and Guernsey had surrendered. They had been in German hands for nearly five years, the only part of the United Kingdom ever occupied by the Germans.

Some 400,000 German troops in Norway were preparing to return to Germany, set to leave their weapons at the Norwegian border.

From the Pacific, a gruesome photograph appears on the front page, one well-known from Life, showing an Allied airman in a crouching position, blindfolded, with a Japanese military swordsmen about to perform the rites of Bushido and decapitate him. The photograph is horrible for what it does not reveal save to the perceiving mind, cast for an instant vicariously into the shoes of the doomed airman.

The picture was later identified as being that of Australian Sergeant Leonard Siffleet of Special Unit M. His executioner was Yasuno Chikao. The incident took place on New Guinea, at Aitape, October 23, 1943, after Sgt. Siffleet and two others, Private Pattiwahl and Private Reharin, were caught and accused of being spies, conducting reconnaissance behind Japanese lines.

On Okinawa, the American forces had initiated a new offensive drive toward Naha as the Sixth Marine Division, newly engaged in the fight, crossed the Asa River estuary in pre-dawn darkness the day before. Two Japanese suicide bombers failed to blow the bridge. A second river, the Asato, still insulated Naha from the American advance.

Elsewhere on the front, the Marines and Tenth Army made limited gains.

Admiral Nimitz announced that through Wednesday, since April 1 at the start of the campaign for Okinawa, 38,857 Japanese had been killed, an increase of 2,322 during just the prior two days.

About 100 to 150 B-29's bombed Japan again, hitting three industrial centers on Kyushu and Honshu Islands, striking the Kawanishi seaplane plant on Honshu between Kobe and Osaka, while a smaller group of planes hit Oita and Saiki airfields on Kyushu. Cities attacked included Miyakanojo and Nittigahara, plus the Miyaksaki airfield.

None of the 400 planes in the record-breaking raid of the previous day had been lost.

General Curtis LeMay announced that the largest mining blockade in history had been initiated against Japan's Inland Sea, and the Tokyo and Nagoya Harbors. Superfortresses laid the mines, had already conducted a dozen such missions, all at night, since March 21, each with about ten tons of mines aboard. Because of the American bombing raids, 75 percent of Japan's transportation was now being effected by water. Thus the mining operations were critical to interdict supplies to the islands.

Some troops were already being transferred from Europe to the Pacific, but would likely not reach the theater for another six months. The first troops to be transferred were service troops, to prepare the way for the combat troops. First, the transferees had to be trained in Pacific combat techniques.

Some 41,000 troops from the Mediterranean theater were slated to return to the United States by August.

About 2,500 soldiers had achieved at least 85 points in the release points system announced the previous day, such that they could be released from the Army the following day. The men were already stateside.

Back, back. Wait your turn. You've only been in two months, fella, and, what's worse, neither children nor salad on that uniform yet.

On the editorial page, "Monument" consists of a familiar quote, from a News editorial published September 1, 1939, by W. J. Cash, titled "A Fanatic Menaces Civilization", to which we just made reference on April 30.

We note that this editorial was re-published in 1941 in a thick 1,500-page volume titled What America Thinks, a compilation of thousands of editorials and editorial cartoons from newspapers, regarding the war to that time. The News had an impressive number of entries, ten, all by Cash according to Burke Davis in a 1965 letter to Cash's biographer Joseph Morrison, and all bearing his inimitable stamp of style, confirming Mr. Davis's personal knowledge.

"The Sack for This Man" suggests that there was no way out of the dilemma into which the Associated Press found itself than to give the sack to Edward Kennedy, its bureau chief at the Supreme Allied Headquarters, and to do so "publicly and implacably" for his breach of protocol in releasing early, on Monday, the story of the Allied surrender.

The editorial supports the journalists' view, a change from the initial opinion printed on Tuesday in "Scoop and Muzzle", finding Mr. Kennedy to have violated his oath to keep the matter secret and providing no solace for his contention that SHAEF was violating freedom of the press by its censorship.

The Associated Press had relied in good faith on the appropriateness of their bureau chief in releasing the story worldwide.

It had published the day before its apology to the world, and its regrets, says the piece, were in order. Now, Mr. Kennedy had to be sacked.

"For the newspaper man who betrays a confidence betrays an institution whose mudsill is, and by the nature of its function has to be, devotion to confidence. Those are high-sounding words, but their meaning is understood and accepted in the trade."

We would venture a guess that this editorial was authored by J. E. Dowd, an Annapolis graduate and back from the Navy in August after serving stateside for 20 months, honorably and voluntarily. Likely, the predecessor editorial was by Associate Editor Burke Davis, some 15 years the junior of Mr. Dowd.

We respect both men for their opinions and intelligence, but also reserve the right under the First Amendment, even 67 years hence, to differ with either or both on any occasion we damn well choose.

And this is one on which we differ markedly from this editorial, whoever the author was. We have already this week, quite amply, explained our position. We adhere to the reasoning of the earlier editorial, that the public had the right to know as soon as this critical news became available, and journalists should not have been required to stand on the Allies' view of the necessity of ceremony in some overly decorous tip of the hat to the Russians.

We ask whether the public of the nations, after fighting this bloody war for five and a half years, would have been impressed, should they have discovered instead that the news of the surrender had been withheld from their ears for more than a day following announcement by the Germans at 8:30 a.m. EWT, May 7, should the news organizations have uniformly abided by the silly notion imposed by SHAEF, based on imposition by the Allied leaders, in an effort to cooperate with the silly notions of Joe Stalin and Company, to control the news for their own political reasons, such that it would not have been otherwise available to the people of the world until 6:00 p.m., EWT, May 8, at the point President Truman and Prime Minister Churchill broadcast the news officially.

This particular editorial, we could think of a few words, with more than three letters each, to describe for its silly, emotionally laden logic, panting and whooping anent the precious confidences of journalists and their sacred etching in stone.

But if life and liberty is at stake, Mr. Journalist, to hell with your goddamned credo.

Lawyers, for instance, have a duty to protect client confidences, that is matters related either in confidence by a client or which ought be maintained, for their inherent secret nature, in confidence, and owe the duty to the client even superseding death. But, should the client be a crook, likely to repeat criminal conduct which has been related in confidence to the lawyer, or indeed has threatened to commit in the future certain criminal conduct, and the confidence is not one required for present effective representation of the client, then the lawyer is permitted to weigh the public welfare and safety against the confidence and, if the lawyer so chooses, to reveal the confidence when it means protection of the public or a specific person threatened by the client. Likewise, if the client, by his or her own action, implicitly or expressly, waives the confidence, by subsequent statement or action, then the lawyer is no longer required to withhold it.

In reliance on these principles, SHAEF, analogous to the client, waived the confidence by its having authorized release of the information by the German High Command via radio broadcast heard throughout Europe. There was no overriding public interest, i.e. security, involved to justify continued suppression of the information, to counter-balance this implicit waiver by SHAEF.

Mr. Kennedy was correct. Standing on ceremony, on platitudes and credos at such an hour would, we posit, have been nearly criminal in its cruelty to the relatives and close friends worldwide of the soldiers. The soldiers themselves had already been informed of the peace by General Eisenhower. Their parents, their loved ones back home, with no security issue any longer at stake, deserved also to know the news at the earliest possible hour, and should have had it imparted before the Nazis knew of it—as, thanks to SHAEF and rigid adherence to a nonsensical policy, even with the unilateral action of Mr. Kennedy, who acted certainly with tacit, if not expressed, approval of SHAEF by informing them aforehand of his intention, the people of the non-Nazi world did not have.

So, to hell with your Journalists' Creed in this instance, Mr. Whoever You Were, who indited this silly, pompous editorial from some place in the words in excess of three letters.

"Tarnished Hero" writes of Leopold III of Belgium having returned to his home country after five years under the care of the Nazis. In 1940, he was proclaimed a hero for having surrendered his country after only 18 days, thus saving countless Belgian lives. But now, Belgians were not so certain.

"Fielder's Choice" states that it was true, that which the "habitues (and sons of habitues)" of the New York night spots were "crying into their highballs", that being that the curfew imposed on them by the Government, extended by the largesse of Mayor LaGuardia from midnight to 1:00 a.m., had been a piece of "deliberate disciplinarianism" imposed solely to remind New Yorkers that the war was still on.

"Schusnigg's Trials" regards the Austrian leader who had initially acceded to the will of the Nazis, but, when trying through a plebiscite to maintain Austria's independence, found himself suddenly out of power, thrown in jail, and succeeded by Arthur Seyss-Inquart, who set the stage for a rigged plebiscite in March, 1938, the resulting vote of which had allowed the annexation of Austria by Germany, all opposition having been kept from the polls by intimidation and force of the Nazis under Anschluss.

The excerpt from the Congressional Record has Senator Homer Ferguson of Michigan stating that, while he had the profoundest respect for the courage and determination shown by Russia in its military effort during the course of the war, it was required, to establish a lasting peace, that America and Russia speak candidly to one another.

Drew Pearson reports that Undersecretary of State Joseph Grew had just presented Secretary Stettinius with a report on several groups seeking to undermine the San Francisco Conference, the Bretton Woods proposal, and the other steps aimed at international cooperation. The report had been prepared by Louis Birkenhead of the Friends of Democracy. The groups included those who were seeking to stimulate great sympathy for the plight of Poland and Rumania, and were the same isolationists who, prior to and even after 1938-39, had argued that Czechoslovakia and Poland were none of the business of the United States. They were the same who had declared the Atlantic Charter in 1941 a "fraud", now found to be whimpering for its not being followed.

Walter Winchell, "highest-Hoopered news commentator on the air", had made a call on the Earl of Halifax, a delegate to San Francisco. Lord Halifax, Britain's Ambassador to the United States, asked some polite questions re Mr. Winchell's broadcasting methods, wondering whether he ever allowed spectators to visit and view his broadcasts, suggesting implicitly that he might like to see one. Mr. Winchell replied that he did not for the fact that "some nut might grab the microphone and yell in it to 27,000,000 people." Mr. Winchell did not exaggerate. His Hooper rating was 27, each point representing about a million listeners. Lord Halifax was not persistent.

Mr. Pearson next recounts of Leadbelly, the folk singer, having been denied the right by Caesar Petrillo to sing and record his songs accompanied by white musicians, Ellie Horne, Squire Girsbach, and Paul Lingle. The dispute was with regard to Local Union 6 in San Francisco, a musicians' union, which had an ironclad rule, long in place in the Bay Area, that no black musician could in public play with a white musician. And Local 6 had extended the rule to include private recording sessions, even though the public would remain oblivious to the race of the players. The Local had called the national union for advice and been told by Mr. Petrillo not to allow Leadbelly to play in violation of the Local rule.

Another notable case was that of Willie "Bunk" Johnson, the 64-year old trumpeter who had been thought dead but had been discovered working in a cotton field. One of the inventors of New Orleans jazz at the turn of the century and teacher to Louis Armstrong, he had been brought to San Francisco by the Museum of Art, but had been refused by Local 6 the right to play once he got there.

So much, concludes Mr. Pearson, for the Four Freedoms, being so highly touted by the nations at the Civic Center.

This characteristic of the Bay Area is one which many fail to understand, that it is not and never has been a monolithic bastion of liberality and breadth of mind, though certainly healthy enclaves and repositories of those attributes are in evidence, perhaps in greater proportion than in most other areas of similar population density and diversity across the land. But there are inevitably also many Neanderthals in evidence as well, still are, always have been, as in any place, even if perhaps in smaller proportion than in most similarly situated populations with ample diversity in evidence, diversity, however, by its very distinct concentrations still segregated in particular residential areas by nationality, yet beset with inherent xenophobia, a plague of mankind.

Marquis Childs makes mention of a small item buried within the news of the German surrender, that of the brief stopover in Brazil by General Hap Arnold, chief of the Army Air Forces, on his way back from inspection of the European air units. In Rio, he met with President Vargas, who presented him with a top Brazilian military decoration.

Samuel Grafton predicts that the Germans would now become a nation of lawyers, such that they might devote themselves as a nation to study of the subtler aspects of international law, much as the average jailhouse lawyer—to be distinguished from criminal defense attorneys.

A letter writer from New York, using some Wall Street arithmetic, shows the fault in the News editorial "Through the Nose", of April 25, which contended that the British paid more in taxes than Americans. The writer agrees that, on the face of it, the contention was true, but that, in terms of corporate taxes, the reverse was actually the case because British businesses were not taxed on dividends paid to shareholders. Thus, the effective rate of taxation was actually higher in America.

Just what that meant America paid through was not suggested by the letter writer.

And a pastor of Charlotte offers in another letter a prayer for the World Neighborhood, in celebration of Mother's Day, the ensuing Sunday.

Or, it may relate to the mudsill of the journalist's credo. But that is deep background. Hush-hush, and on the Q.T.

We had better stop though before we get into Marlowe's ghost.

Telemachus to Pallas then (apart,
His ear inclining close, that none might hear)
In this sort said: "My guest, exceeding dear,
Will you not sit incens'd with what I say?
These are the cares these men take; feast and play.
Which eas'ly they may use, because they eat,
Free and unpunish'd, of another's meat;
And of a man's, whose white bones wasting lie
In some far region, with th' incessancy
Of showers pour'd down upon them, lying ashore,
Or in the seas wash'd naked. Who, if he wore
Those bones with flesh and life and industry,
And these might here in Ithaca set eye
On him return'd, they all would wish to be
Either past other in celerity
Of feet and knees, and not contend t' exceed
In golden garments. But his virtues feed
The fate of ill death; nor is left to me
The least hope of his life's recovery,
No, not if any of the mortal race
Should tell me his return; the cheerful face
Of his return'd day never will appear.
But tell me, and let Truth your witness bear,
Who, and from whence you are? What city's birth?
What parents? In what vessel set you forth?
And with what mariners arrived you here?
I cannot think you a foot passenger.