Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that troops of the First Ukrainian Army had liberated Prague, the last European capital still in German hands. The end came at 4:00 a.m., four hours after the official midnight surrender time. Further enemy action was outlawed under the terms of surrender and reprisals for violation included reservation of the right of summary execution.

At that point, the Russians proclaimed the surrender of Germany, ten hours after the proclamation by President Truman and Prime Minister Churchill.

Field Marshal Wilhelm Keitel ratified the surrender in Berlin at Marshal Gregory Zhukov's headquarters. Present were Air Chief Marshal Sir Arthur Tedder, acting for General Eisenhower, General Carl Spaatz for the United States, and General de Lattre de Tassigny for the French.

At around midnight, about 79,000 Germans surrendered the remaining French ports under their control, St. Nazaire, La Rochelle, and Lorient. The only Germans in France who had not yet surrendered were a contingent of 12,000 at Dunkerque.

The remaining holdouts in the Vistula Estuary on the Baltic near Danzig had been ordered by the German High Command to cease fire and surrender.

Further information was provided on the terms of surrender, including that all German armament, aircraft, trucks and other military equipment was to be accounted for and surrendered to local Allied commanders.

The American Seventh Army captured Air Marshal Hermann Goering on a road east of Kitzbuhel the previous night. He had been held in Berchtesgaden since his arrest by the Germans on April 27, pursuant to his having recommended surrender. He had been ordered executed by the Nazis and said that he last saw Hitler on April 22 in Berlin, believed that he had died on either April 27 or 28.

Ultimately, Goering would be tried and convicted of war crimes at Nuremberg, and committed suicide the night before his scheduled hanging in October, 1946.

Field Marshal Albert von Kesselring was also captured, as was General Ritter von Epp, the former defender of Munich and governor of Bavaria.

In 1947, von Kesselring was found guilty of war crimes and sentenced to death, but his sentence was ultimately commuted, and he was released from prison in 1952 for reasons of health, dying in 1960.

A story surfaced that on the previous Saturday night, a German U-boat had sunk the American collier Black Point off Point Judith, R.I. Its twelve crew members were missing, but several survivors made it into lifeboats and were rescued. The U-boat was then destroyed.

Vidkun Quisling, the first major traitor of the war, was taken prisoner in Oslo and would be arraigned for treason during the afternoon, pursuant to Norwegian law. Quisling and six members of his Cabinet voluntarily surrendered.

Quisling would be tried in August, convicted, and shot in October.

The German commissioner in Norway, Josef Terboven, and the SS commander, General Redleas, were reported to have committed suicide.

An inside page has a story by Louis Lochner who, with two other correspondents, were permitted to tour the Eagle's Nest, the "tea house" of Hitler atop Kehlstein Mountain, that which was confused in reports a couple of weeks earlier, on April 25, as being hit by RAF bombs when actually it was spared. The Berghof, Hitler's mountain hideaway, was that which was hit. Hitler, himself, history subsequently learned, hardly ever went to the Eagle's Nest, a place reserved for his guests.

The journalists, accompanied by Army officers, met, during their trek on foot up the mountain, an electrical engineer of Berchtesgaden who provided them background on the tea house. Hitler, he said, had not been there recently.

Mr. Lochner describes the elaborate decor of the building and its undisturbed contents, belying the reports during the war attributing to Hitler Spartan simplicity.

Another inside page continues the story of the premature release by Edward Kennedy of the news of surrender and his subsequent suspension by Supreme Allied Headquarters from further coverage of the war. Headquarters announced the suspensions of two other Associated Press representatives pending investigation for their part in forwarding the story, Morton Gudebrand and Robert Bunnelle, the latter the A.P. executive director in the United Kingdom, the London office having received the dispatch from Paris and then forwarded it to New York.

The story adds to the previous accounts that Mr. Kennedy, speaking on his own behalf for the first time after being held incommunicado by the public relations division of Supreme Allied Headquarters in Paris, denied any breach of a confidentiality pledge to keep the story under wraps for 36 hours. He stated that he had discussed with Headquarters his intention to release the story because he had been informed that there was no military necessity involved in keeping it secret. When told that Headquarters intended to suppress the story until a subsequent time, he informed them that he would not abide that decision, with no military security at issue.

Brig. General Frank Allen, Jr., director of public relations for Headquarters, refused comment on Mr. Kennedy's contentions, implicitly admitting them.

Thus, Mr. Kennedy denied that he ever entered into the pledge in the first place with the other 16 reporters.

A New York Times story by Raymond Daniell also appears, under a dateline of May 8 from Paris, labeling the entire matter a fiasco from the standpoint of military bureaucracy.

It explains that other reporters, besides the Associated Press staff, were also suspended for entering Berlin and reporting what they saw in the Russian zone without being escorted by Supreme Allied Headquarters.

Meanwhile, the correspondents were focusing their attention on General Allen for his bungling of the entire matter. He had allowed only three American newspaper agencies, the A. P., the U. P., and the International News Service, to view the surrender and not a single representative of an individual newspaper, even though four American broadcasters were allowed seats. Price Day of the Baltimore Sun had won a seat in a coin toss only after the British Exchange Telegraph Agency representative decided to vacate. When other individual newspaper representatives complained about Mr. Day's inclusion, General Allen limited him to reporting only for the Exchange Telegraph in London and not for the Sun. That decision, however, was subsequently reversed. In the end, the Army selected those who were to witness the signing.

Besides the three American news agencies and four broadcasters, the other press representatives were British, French, and Australian.

British Lt. General Frederick E. Morgan had found the determination of exclusivity a "disgrace" and vowed to the numerous British and American journalists standing on the sidewalk outside the little red schoolhouse, Allied Headquarters in Reims, that he would do something about it. A few minutes later, M.P.'s exited the building and ordered all, save five of the correspondents, Mr. Daniell being one, to board jeeps and "get the hell out of there." Subsequently, it was learned that after General Morgan had complained to General Allen about the journalists left outside, General Allen had interpreted the remark to indicate that General Morgan wanted the journalists shooed away.

General Allen had promised to meet with the five left on the sidewalk regarding coverage, but never got around to it until after the surrender, at which point he apologized for the confusion, stating that there was nothing personal about the bungle. He explained that the impelling motive for the restrictions was simply the limited space in the War Room. But he also admitted that there was room for another half dozen correspondents, even after the admission of "twenty-odd girls and other friends"—whether in reference to General Eisenhower or someone else not being made clear. In any event, the general completely forgot about the group of five outside.

At a special meeting of the correspondents, Charles Wertenbacker of Time and Drew Middleton of the New York Times introduced and seconded a resolution stating that reporters at Headquarters no longer held confidence in the public relations division or its director, General Allen. Action on the resolution was deferred.

General Allen contended that he had acted in accordance with the approval of the press committee in admitting press representatives to the War Room.

But the piece finds this claim problematic for the fact that American correspondents had, the previous December, made reservations in writing to be admitted to the surrender. Moreover, the plans for coverage of the surrender were premised on it taking place in Berlin, a different matter as it would have been a story developing in phases and covered accordingly, with correspondents able to obtain entry to the city in waves. The correspondents had never liked the plan of the Army but had accepted it with reservations, as premised on the Berlin surrender. The protocol which should have been followed in the end, however, for the surrender at Reims was that drawn up at Dieppe and followed since, establishing priorities for certain organizations—presumably inclusive of the New York Times.

The Daniell piece then goes on to discuss the Kennedy part of the story, indicating that Mr. Kennedy's phone at the Hotel Scribe, the correspondents' hotel, had been disconnected and that he had to use a neighbor's phone just to call a waiter, could make no phone calls to the outside world.

The result of the entire matter was a spirited discussion among journalists covering the war anent freedom of the press and the ethics of journalism—probably cathartic at the end of five and a half years of warfare on the Continent.

They obviously needed a rest—a long rest.

In any event, Mr. Daniell reports of Mr. Kennedy's fellow correspondents' differing viewpoint from that of Mr. Kennedy, that he acted in the public interest. With two exceptions, they had voted to send a letter to General Eisenhower denouncing Mr. Kennedy's actions and those of the Associated Press in printing the story ahead of the agreed time for release. They rejected Mr. Kennedy's contention that the Army was interfering in this instance with freedom of the press, finding that the early release "not only put a premium on dishonesty but also put a brake upon free coverage of historic events in the Europe of the future".

Boyd Lewis of the U.P. reported to Mr. Daniell that on the plane to Reims, General Allen had briefed all of the 17 invited correspondents, a briefing on which Mr. Kennedy had taken notes, that the story they were about to be permitted to cover was off the record until the heads of the governments had announced it. General Allen then stated that he regarded each of them pledged not to release it until cleared by the public relations division of Headquarters. Mr. Daniell points out that Mr. Lewis was a representative of a rival news organization but that, nevertheless, his account was supported by several other newsmen.

The fact of the matter, in the end, and we feel perhaps authorized by our now having read every line of print on the front page of The Charlotte News printed on World War II since Pearl Harbor, every last word, that the reporters who covered the war did an extraordinary job without exception, often under fire, sometimes getting wounded, sometimes dying. They all deserve our undying thanks for leaving a thorough and complete record of matters, made under the very worst of circumstances, literally under the gun.

While it is a shame that this matter came up at all in the waning hours of the war in Europe, it neither taints Mr. Kennedy's efforts to get the story out nor the fine job of the other reporters performing under the worst of circumstances.

But it is a bit akin to generals arguing over who should receive credit for winning the war, the Russians, or the Western Allies. They all worked together, even if sometimes at each others' throats, and the war could not have been won without any single component being present, including the journalists who brought news of the war to the people at home and made them feel what the men overseas were enduring, at a time when brief black and white newsreels and short films, some in color, could not possibly convey in the movie theater, between bites of popcorn, the full scope of the war. There is no substitute for morale at home bolstered not by false propaganda but honest and thorough reporting.

At the end of the day, the people at home deserved to know that the war was over when it was over, not so that ceremonies could be held pompously, delaying that reportage artificially by 36 hours. No one deserves an historical slap in the face on this bit of silliness other than the public relations division of Supreme Allied Headquarters who obviously, as the reporters involved themselves found, behaved poorly in this hour when appropriate behavior could have easily been managed.

They admitted the twenty-odd girls and friends to the War Room of the Ecole Professionale in Reims and left the others out on the street. They released the news to the German radio and approved its broadcast at 8:30 a.m. EWT, Monday. That latter act certainly nullified the pledge and the other reporters could just as easily have filed their stories and all risked retaliation by SHAEF under concerted protest, a better presentation of the First Amendment versus the Army's idea of freedom and discipline, and in this case, plain pig-headed stupidity, putting ceremony ahead of the people's right to know when the war ended. The people undoubtedly would have preferred a whisper in the middle of the night by both President Truman and Prime Minister Churchill to that which occurred.

So, instead of blame, we think it is appropriate to offer kudos to Mr. Kennedy.

The Army always needs to be reminded that civilians ain't in it, and, within reasonable wartime strictures to avoid aiding the enemy, should not have their freedoms in any manner curtailed, lest the very purpose of the war in the first instance be nullified and lost, in which case a victorious effort is for naught.

The First Amendment does not say, "except within wartime or other times inconvenient to the society". That, indeed, would be a convenient recipe for despotism, such as a war declared without end, thus giving license to suspend civil liberties indefinitely.

We do not go to war to make heroes. We go to war, reluctantly, only when freedom is threatened and to preserve that freedom. Mr. Kennedy, we believe, understood that basic principle and maintained it uppermost in his mind at a time when many of his fellows, caught within the fog of war, had become benighted.

Lending some credence to rumors that the Japanese were sending out peace feelers with a view toward surrender since the shakeup announced April 5 of the Japanese Cabinet and installation of more moderate Admiral Suzuki to replace Premier Koiso, President Truman issued a statement, as discussed on the other inside page, defining "unconditional surrender" for Japan, stating that it meant that soldiers and sailors would be allowed to return to their homes, that it did not mean the destruction of their farms or jobs, or enslavement or extermination of the Japanese people.

Members of Congress responded positively to the statement and found it significant, in finally stating with particularity what was meant by the term, that the statement appeared to portend the possibility of Japanese surrender.

Columnists, particularly Dorothy Thompson, had urged President Roosevelt for over two years to be more precise in defining the meaning of the otherwise vague term. Of course, prior to the end of the European war, the President was not competent to so define it unilaterally for the Allies. As to the Pacific war, at this new stage, he now had a freer hand, since the United States had borne the great burden of the fighting and loss in the Pacific war.

In Japan, the Government issued a statement vowing to continue the fight and that defenses of Japan were being strengthened for that eventuality.

With the end of the war in Europe, American military commanders in the Pacific stated that it would be full-speed ahead henceforth in that theater. Admiral Nimitz stated that he did not expect surrender at this point and plans were proceeding for invasion of Japan.

Some troops in Italy were already being sent to join the Pacific theater, first going to the United States.

In San Francisco, Foreign Commissar V. M. Molotov departed the conference after only two weeks to return to Moscow. The members of the commission on Poland from both the United States and Great Britain, Averell Harriman and Sir Archibald Clark Kerr, also were scheduled to leave the conference during the day. The reason for the suspended negotiations was the report of the arrest of the sixteen Polish leaders provided Secretary Stettinius by Mr. Molotov. The implication was that talks on Poland might be resumed in Moscow, following a conference with the Polish government-in-exile. Until the Polish question was resolved, the conference was suspended.

War Mobilizer Fred Vinson announced that some limited production of automobiles would begin within six to nine months, that some increase in gas allowance, 100,000 to 200,000 barrels of oil daily, an increase of 8 to 16 percent, would likely be afforded motorists, at least temporarily, but that there was no immediate prospect for either relief from the food shortage or high war taxes. Previous estimates by Secretary of Interior Harold Ickes had indicated that gasoline usage could be increased by as much as 50 percent following V-E Day. Judge Vinson stated that it would be a long while before substantial numbers of new automobiles would be produced. Some manpower and materials from war manufacturing for the Army would be released. The Army intended to reduce its manpower slowly by 1.3 million men during the ensuing twelve months. There would be no demobilization of any part of the Navy until Japan was defeated.

He also stated that the midnight curfew on entertainment and the ban on horse-racing, in effect since the beginning of the year, would be immediately lifted. The move allowed the Kentucky Derby to be scheduled for June, with the Preakness the following Saturday, and the Belmont Stakes, two weeks later. The Triple Crown races would be held on the successive Saturdays, June 9, 16, and 23.

On the editorial page, "It Was Close" reminds how close the nation came to being forever foreclosed from celebrating V-E Day through dilatory action in the war. Defeat might have been the fate of the Allies had matters not turned. Months, weeks, even days of waiting longer to act might have resulted in that fate. Thus, it was well to remember that the isolationism of 1940, regarded at the time as Americanism, was the responsible cause for this near defeat.

"New Men, New Days" marks the entry of the newly elected City Council, just as the bells of V-E Day were tolling. Before the two-year term would be completed, it predicts, the plans for development would be translated into action with new building projects.

"A New Face" quotes from the German declaration at surrender, urging respect for the treaties and aiming to belong again to the European family of nations, to heal the wounds caused by the war.

"Prize of Prizes" praises the award of the Pulitzer Prize to Hal Boyle for his "distinguished correspondence" during the war, in North Africa, in Italy, and in Europe. Mr. Boyle had nearly been killed when landing in North Africa with the troops, but never made anything of it.

Early on, before the November 8, 1942 landings, the first American infantry involvement in the war against Germany, he had reported in a light-hearted vein of the war. But, after the landings, he turned to more serious reporting of the soldier's daily life in wartime. Yet, he never lost the ability to relate of the humorous and ridiculous side of the war—such as the memorable report, a Twice-Tolled Taler, of the soldier in France who lost his bearings while bringing uniforms to an outfit, crossed enemy lines, was shot at by German machineguns, but managed to turn around his jeep and find his way back to the outfit, only to arrive with a load of pants riddled with bullet holes.

Now, says the piece, Mr. Boyle could take a much deserved rest from his dutiful chores, which he had been performing for a year without respite.

For much of the time since Pearl Harbor, Mr. Boyle's pieces were carried either on the front page of the newspaper or on the editorial page. They had disappeared, however, from the editorial page, except occasionally, following the previous November, when an editorial decision was made to move his pieces to another page of the newspaper.

The column provided the reader of the time a slice of Army life, occasionally Navy life, and personalized the war, much as Ernie Pyle had done in his personal stories before being killed on Ie Jima April 18.

Sometimes, we have the distinct impression that Mr. Boyle is one of those friendly ghosts of these prints who has directed us from time to time in friendly directions to enable us, and then you hopefully, to see things about the war a little more clearly than the ordinary brush received from historical accounts.

In line with a bit of that ghostliness, going back to our note on Friday, just now, we have learned for the first time that in July, 1947, just after the Roswell incident in New Mexico involving the supposed landing of Martians or somebody, Mr. Boyle would write a series of pieces titled "Trip on a Flying Saucer", in which he chronicled his kidnapping by an eight-foot tall green alien named Balmiston X-ray O'Rune, being taken to the red planet in a case of mistaken identity, Mr. O'Rune, possessed of only one yolk-like eye, believing Mr. Boyle to be Orson Welles, the goal of their sweepstakes-induced mission to earth having been to capture Mr. Welles and "eleven other difficult objects".

We have to suppose that, after this two and a half year voyage into the world of the confrontation between the U. S. Army and the Nazis, somehow that later 1,200 mph trip of 57,600 miles in a 48-hour period was quite uneventful, even pedestrian by comparison.

It would be for us at this point.

In any event, we hope that Mr. Boyle was able during his R & R to have one of those drinks he ran across in Italy shortly before Christmas, 1943, the one with the goat's milk and a few other ingredients.

Mr. Boyle, a native of Kansas City, would live until 1974, dying at age 63 of Lou Gehrig's Disease, ALS. He wrote some 7,680 columns for the Associated Press in thirty years, having more by-lines at his death than any other previous A. P. correspondent.

The excerpt from the Congressional Record finds New York Congressman Emanuel Celler congratulating and commending President Truman for appointing Supreme Court Justice Robert Jackson as chief counsel for the international tribunal on war crimes, which would ultimately convene at Nuremberg.

While Mr. Celler's speech occurred before the unconditional surrender, Admiral Doenitz was charged at Nuremberg with war crimes, was convicted and sentenced to ten years in Spandau Prison. He was released in 1956 and lived until 1980.

Drew Pearson discusses the behind-the-scenes occurrences regarding the disclosure by V. M. Molotov of the Red Army arrest of the 16 Polish leaders in Russia for allegedly "diversionist efforts" against the Red Army. Commissar Molotov told Secretary Stettinius that the Russians would try only the guilty among the Polish mission. Mr. Stettinius informed Mr. Molotov that he would report the matter to the press, to which Molotov expressed no objection.

Samuel Grafton favors reveling in the streets in celebration of V-E Day over two other types of more dangerous celebration. One was evidenced by the vote of the Republicans in the House the previous week, overwhelmingly voting to override President Truman's veto of the bill to defer all farm workers from the draft, an unsuccessful effort, but nevertheless indicative of early celebration of V-E Day by the House Republicans.

Marquis Childs reports on the reappointment by President Truman of David Lilienthal to be Administrator of the Tennessee Valley Authority. In the position, Mr. Lilienthal had performed efficiently and with a profit for the government-run authority. But the president pro tem of the Senate, now sitting as its regular presiding officer in the absence of a Vice-President, Senator Kenneth McKellar, had long been an enemy of Mr. Lilienthal and had sought his ouster. President Truman, trying to keep Senator McKellar happy, was risking political capital in the reappointment but had acted prudently based on Mr. Lilienthal's performance.

Dorothy Thompson, in Jerusalem, reports of the concerns in the Middle East for the post-war future, that the three separate regions of the Holyland, Christian, Jewish, and Moslem, each perceived a struggle between traditional ways of life in the region and Westernization. The British had been the dominant power in the region and received most of their oil from the area. The primary question was what influence Russia would exert on the balance and what would be the role of the United States.

Parenthetically, that which Drew Pearson discussed the previous day, re the consistent effort by the British to pen in Russia from access to warm-water passages to the West, via the Mediterranean, or even access to the Baltic in the north, a policy ongoing for a century, not just as a reaction to the Communist State in Russia, dovetails with this analysis by Ms. Thompson, fairly setting forth, in combination, the impetus for Western policy with respect to Russia, and the breeder reactor for the Cold War, during the ensuing 45 years.

As a counter-balance to the Soviets, she continues, it was inevitable that the West would need to have control militarily or politically of the Middle East, including Saudi Arabia, Iran, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Transjordan, Egypt, and Palestine. It was imperative for the West therefore to maintain friendly relations with these countries.

It was hoped that the San Francisco Conference might produce some form of democratic union within the Middle East, pursuant to Atlantic Charter principles, enabling mutual security and making room for a Jewish homeland within Palestine.

And, remember, if you want good jade, buy Southern Bread.