Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that the largest B-29 raid of the war had taken place against Japan with 600 Superfortresses dropping 4,000 tons of incendiary bombs on Kure Naval base on the Inland Sea, Shimonoseki, a rail center, and Ube, coal and magnesium center, all on Honshu, as well as Kumamoto on Kyushu. Two planes were lost in the raid but twenty members of the crews were rescued.

The Australian Seventh Division on Sunday had made the third landing on Borneo, at Balikpapan, against aggressive to light opposition, swiftly taking a mile of beach and moving inland against scattered enemy fire. By mid-afternoon, the troops had taken the last ridge overlooking Borneo's primary oil center.

The month-long pre-invasion bombardment of Balikpapan by the U. S. 13th and Fifth Air Forces and rocket fire from the Seventh Fleet had enabled the relatively swift and easy landing. The 3,500 tons of bombing were more than the combined total fired at Leyte, Lingayan Gulf, Luzon, and Manila.

General MacArthur, as he surveyed Japanese positions 200 yards from the forward command post on Mount Malang on Balikpapan, received sniper fire consisting of eight shots "singing like a beehive". Neither the General nor the Australian brigadier general, with whom he was conferring at the time over a large-scale map, made the slightest gesture of response but continued to talk.

Some resistance was still taking place on Luzon at Kiangan, Mankayan, and Bontoc, northeast of Baguio.

Total enemy losses in the Philippines campaign had reached 419,035, of whom 9,774 were prisoners. American losses had totaled 11,715 killed and 1,131 missing for the entire campaign, which included the actions on Luzon, Mindanao, Leyte, and the smaller islands.

Many of the Japanese surrendering of late were apparently prescient beyond their abilities to know empirically of events to come which had not yet been: they predicted that the war would end with Japanese surrender in August. They premised their belief, however, not on the fury of two atomic bombs, the first of which would be dropped five weeks from this date following the first test two weeks hence in the New Mexico desert, but rather on the simple expedient of Prince Konoye possibly heading a new cabinet which would seek an early capitulation.

Representative Edward Hart of New Jersey stepped aside as chair of the House Un-American Activities Committee because of health. John Rankin of Mississippi, who had authored the bill at the beginning of the year to make the committee permanent and was the senior Democrat on the committee after Mr. Hart, was the presumptive successor as chairman.

Claude Wickard, former Secretary of Agriculture, was sworn in as the new head of the Rural Electrification Administration.

Following announcement formally by the President late on Saturday that he was nominating James Byrnes, former War Mobilizer, and prior to that, Senator from South Carolina and Supreme Court Justice, to be the new Secretary of State, Mr. Byrnes was quickly confirmed unanimously by the Senate to replace Edward Stettinius, to become the first U. S. representative to the United Nations following the ratification of the U. N. Charter by two-thirds of the Senate. The Senate confirmation of Mr. Byrnes took only a few minutes after the body suspended rules requiring hearings on Cabinet appointments, a move supported by both Majority Leader Alben Barkley of Kentucky and Minority Leader Wallace White of Maine.

President Truman presented to the Senate, at 1:03 p.m. EWT, the United Nations Charter, urging quick ratification. The whole world was watching, he reminded the Senators. He remarked of the Connally Resolution in the Senate and the Fulbright Resolution in the House, having been passed by each chamber more than a year earlier, approving of the concept of U. S. membership in an international organization to preserve the peace. He did not detail the various provisions of the Charter but stated his assumption that the lawmakers were familiar with it.

The President wore a gray suit with a blue bow tie.

Throughout the world, the other 49 delegations at San Francisco likewise were presenting the Charter to their respective legislative bodies for approval. It was expected that by fall, each of the nations would have acted on the question of ratification. Some nations, however, still had to convene new legislatures following the surrender of Germany.

Associated Press reporter Eddie Gilmore stated from Moscow that what the United States did with regard to the Charter would not likely affect Soviet action, that Russia would likely be among the first nations to approve the Charter.

In Britain, a new Parliament would not convene until August 1, after the election July 5. So no action there would occur before that point.

Dr. Joseph Maddy, president of the National Music Camp at Interlochen, Michigan, defiantly raised his conductor's baton and began conducting 210 young musicians, thumbing his nose at the edict of Caesar Petrillo, the head of the American Federation of Musicians, forbidding AFM members from playing or conducting at the camp. Said Dr. Maddy, "Now we'll see if he wants to do something about it."

Since 1942, Mr. Petrillo had banned national broadcasts from the camp following twelve years of such presentations. Earlier in the year, he had warned musicians that they would be jeopardizing their union membership should they work at the camp.

The piece being played was not reported.

Near Poplar Bluff, Mo., an Army deserter who had hidden in caves in the Ozark Hills for three years after going over the hill from Fort Sill in Oklahoma in July, 1942, had been caught by the FBI and the Missouri State Highway Patrol. When approached as he drove along a country road, he had reached for a rifle and was then shot with buckshot by a Highway Patrolman. He was being treated.

Where on his person he was shot was not reported.

Electric and gas refrigerators were expected to be restored to stores by September and October, gone from the market since early 1942 when production was suspended to conserve steel for the military. Yet, because of advance orders by desirous consumers, the actual in-stock availability of refrigerators would not occur for another year.

A list of various items and their expected date in the stores is presented on the page. You may consult it to see what it is you need and want and when it will become available.

Some alarm clocks are already in the stores and more will be there by the end of the year.

Radios won't become available, however, before early 1946, if then.

No word yet on cars. Sorry. That beautiful new Nash though is coming soon.

A photograph shows one of those Japanese paper balloons, packed with explosives, floating somewhere over North America. Now, you know that for which to be on the alert.

On the editorial page, "Somebody's Wrong" complains of the lack of prosecution of drunk driving cases after arrests had been effected by the police, that it was the source of the rash of swerving, weaving drivers, wheeling their ways home, glassy-eyed and oblivious to their impending oblivion and that of their fellow motorists.

It takes all kinds.

"Relief Measure" comments on the overcrowding of mental hospitals in the state as a result of not accepting a broad program of sterilization and because senile patients were admitted to such institutions when they did not properly belong in them. County homes once provided for the aged, but most had closed. Camp Sutton, former Army training camp during the war, had been acquired by the State to house the aged, with room for about a thousand patients.

The view expressed on sterilization, as we have several times commented, was a product of the times when such practices, despite full awareness of their congering images of Nazi Germany, were believed to be remedial of an otherwise burdensome and irremediable problem of chronic mental illness, believed transmitted genetically. Now, of course, those views are scientifically debunked. But such were the times.

In actual practice, sterilization was used as a tool of socio-economic and hence racial discrimination, often used not on the mentally infirm but merely on persons who were poor and had the misfortune of becoming pregnant at a young age, even by being the victim of rape or incest.

"Without Guns" discusses the shootings during the war period by or involving Charlotte taxicab drivers, including two the previous March. One of the drivers who had shot a man had a lengthy criminal record, one known to the police. But the rule for cab drivers allowed licensure even if convicted of a felony as long as two years had passed since the conviction.

The Grand Jury had, the previous week, recommended that the City Council pass an ordinance prohibiting cab drivers from carrying firearms. Although recognizing the dangers of being a cab driver, operating alone, at night, in all sections of the city, it asserts that such a law would be beneficial to public safety.

"Little Empire" discusses the cession of Ruthenia to Russia by Czechoslovakia without any dissension. Most of its 725,000 inhabitants apparently desired to become part of the Ukraine, but the lack of news dissemination from Eastern Europe made this notion only an assumption based on claims of Czech officials that most Ruthenians following World War I had wanted to join Russia.

The excerpt from the Congressional Record has Senator William Langer of North Dakota commenting on the reciprocal trade agreements, before the replacement of Secretary of State Stettinius, stating that President Truman would be given power to regulate tariffs and have reciprocal trade implemented by a State Department headed by the former president of U. S. Steel, with Nelson Rockefeller overseeing Latin American relations, though universally hated by the citizenry of the region, and Will Clayton, cotton magnate, in charge of economic relations, though he had done business with Russia before recognition of the Soviet Government in the early thirties and had likewise traded with Japan and Germany before the war.

Drew Pearson discusses the files of I. G. Farben in Germany and its patents on synthetic gasoline, synthetic rubber, and other secret war materials produced for the German war machine. Much of it had been accomplished in cooperation with Standard Oil of New Jersey and Alcoa prior to Pearl Harbor. The files, which might reveal the extent of these latter dealings and shed light on the processes themselves, were initially stored by the Army in a warehouse in Frankfurt. Then, the Army moved some displaced persons into the warehouse, Russians, Poles, and French, who began rifling through the files for themselves to see whether they contained anything of value. Eventually, the files were moved outside into the weather, until someone realized their importance and moved them back inside. Now, however, the files were so disorganized and scattered that sorting through them might prove impracticable.

The dispute might become the first case to be brought before the United Nations Security Council for resolution. Mr. Pearson believed that, in such event, Russia could utilize the Big Five veto power to block action. His assumption was actually not wholly correct as the Charter provides for no right of veto to any Big Five member whose action is before the Council regarding peaceful settlement or discussion of disputes, per Article 27. Use of force, however, to resolve a dispute does require unanimous Security Council action.

He notes that it had been the Russian threat to the Dardanelles, controlled by Turkey, which had given rise to the Crimean War in 1853-56, in which the British had entered on the side of Turkey. Were war to erupt again between Russia and Turkey over these currently disputed territories, then the Arab states would likely enter the war on the side of Turkey, placing Britain, with substantial interests in the Middle East, in an uncomfortable position.

Edward Stettinius had sent a note to the Russians indicating the State Department's support of the Turkish position and reminding of the commitment made at Yalta by the Big Three to assure Turkish independence. A meeting had also occurred between Foreign Commissar Molotov and the Turkish Ambassador to Moscow, in which the Russians had relented somewhat on their demands, that the Russians would demand bases in the Dardanelles only in the case of war. But it had also been indicated that the Russians wanted to discuss the Balkans, meaning that they wanted Turkey to cede to Bulgaria European Turkey. Mr. Molotov had assured that if these conditions were met, there would be a treaty between Russia and Turkey. But the Turkish Ambassador was not receptive to the offers.

Finally, Mr. Pearson pays tribute to outgoing Secretary of Labor Frances Perkins, in office for twelve years, during some of the most tumultuous and changing times for labor in the country's history. Though critical of her performance at times, he finds her overall record to have been worthy of credit, especially compared to some of her predecessors. She was leaving office, he notes, nearly broke, having stayed on in the position for four years beyond the point of her stated intent to leave in 1941, and had given up in the process an offer to become president of a New England women's college.

Dorothy Thompson, writing from Frankfurt am Main in Germany, again tells of the utter destruction wrought on Germany by the Allies and by Hitler and the Wehrmacht, a status from which it was unlikely to recover for a half century or more in terms of becoming revitalized industrially and militarily. By that time, with the United States and the Soviet Union not standing still in either category, she predicts, Germany would be so far behind that it could never catch up.

Marquis Childs comments on the succession of James Byrnes to the head of the State Department. The transition would result in a new alignment, he predicts, within the Department. Mr. Byrnes would bring a sense of diplomacy with him to the new job. But he had demonstrated little organizational skill as War Mobilizer and so it was imperative that a new Undersecretary possessed of those capacities be appointed to replace Joseph Grew.

Samuel Grafton contrasts the British approach thus far to occupation of Germany with that of the Americans. Whereas the British were not interested in discriminating between the Nazis and non-Nazis, and were not very active in the occupation zone, the Americans practiced the contrary, utilizing counter-intelligence officers to ferret out Nazis, even if not very effective at making the distinctions from non-Nazis. American generals tended to be affable to those individual Germans they liked, without regard to politics. But Germans were not being utilized much in the governance of the American zone. The Americans ought allow more political activity, Mr. Grafton opines, and let nature take its course, without so much rigorous military control.