Site Ed. Note: The front page reports from Italy of an advance of about five miles by the Fifth Army, taking Raviscanina, fifteen miles south of Isernia. The Eighth Army also moved to within fifteen miles of Isernia from the southeast, taking Objano.

The Germans were reported to be forming a defensive line from Mondragone on the west coast through Venafro to Vasto on the Adriatic coast. The Eighth Army had already established a bridgehead to within seven miles of Vasto.

In Russia, the Germans, numbering up to a million, were in fast and disorderly retreat toward the Bug River from the Dneiper before the onslaught of four Russian armies pursuing posthaste. The German line extended 200 miles, from Kremenchug to the Sea of Azov. The Russians had also reached the outskirts of Krovoi Rog, last German stronghold in the Dneiper bend.

According to the Free Yugoslav radio, the Yugoslav Partisans under Tito took the steel center of Vares-Maydan, twenty miles north of Sarajevo.

German columns attacked part of the Yugoslav Army Second Corps near Montenegro. The Free Yugoslav radio had reported that the Patriots fighting under General Draja Mikhailovic were fighting with the Nazis. But General Mikhailovic denied the report vehemently, contending also that Tito's forces had attacked the Patriots without cause and had claimed victories against the Germans which properly belonged to the Patriots.

It was reported from Jerusalem that several hundred Jews had escaped Northern Italy into Southern Italy, seeking asylum in Palestine. Others were arriving in Jerusalem from Hungary and Mozambique.

Hal Boyle reports of General Mark Clark having sent his personal airplane from Italy to Sicily to pick up a load of cigarettes to be delivered to the front after he found that his soldiers were no longer possessed of tobacco.

In Melbourne, Arkansas, Mary Durant was arrested on a charge of first degree murder of her step-father who she claimed had abused her.

Whether anyone laid up with a broken leg using his telescope to view the comings and goings of his neighbors saw the comely, demure 21-year old woman drag the 200-pound corpse into the backyard of the home near Calico Rock and then proceed to bury it, other than the dog which eventually dug it up, was not told.

At first, the police had also charged Ms. Durant's mother with the homicide, but Mary cleared her mother of the charge.

At least Mary didn't provide her step-father with forty-one. Rather, she had used, allegedly, a .22-caliber rifle to deliver him unto the quiet.

The President was reported doing better after suffering for three days from the grippe.

It was not reported whether in the grippe, as with Prime Minister Churchill the previous February, the President's catarrh gently seeped.

On the editorial page, "False Claims" finds Tennessee Senator "Pat" McKellar's rationalization for voting against the bill to provide Federal aid to schools because of its amendment banning use of the funds to further racial or other discrimination to be replete with old Southern assumptions: that the schools were educationally adequate generally and that blacks and whites were educated equally under the extant system.

The piece obviously thinks otherwise.

"Fightin' Wendell" recommends to readers the previous day's piece by Drew Pearson on Wendell Willkie's frank talk to Republican Congressmen in Washington. It believes that the people of the country were ready for something less restrictive on free enterprise than had become the New Deal, yet retaining the fruits of social progress they had come to enjoy under FDR's Administration, to have, as the piece puts it, their cake and eat it too.

The editorial opines that Mr. Willkie would be the Republican answer to that collective plea, and if he were to demonstrate in the general campaign the kind of frank talk displayed with the Congressmen, he would win.

"Tell the Truth" informs that there was a new and refreshing candor in reports coming from the Army and Navy on the war. No longer were the reports delayed when bad news came from the battle front. It was a good thing, says the piece, for it would prevent the type of overconfidence which had come to characterize the American people in recent months and consequently had tended to bog down the war production effort at home.

"Sweet Secret" reports that the State Department had confirmed the report by Senator Mead of New York, obtained from the French in North Africa during his tour of the battle fronts, that the Germans were ready to surrender, perhaps as early as the beginning of 1944. The conclusion was premised on the belief that the Germans would react as they had in 1918 when they saw that loss of the war was a fait accompli : they would surrender before Germany was physically destroyed by bombs.

The editorial adds the caveat, however, that this time, the Allies were determined to obtain unconditional surrender, not simply an armistice as in 1918. Whether Germany would accept such terms remained subject to question. If not, correctly predicts the piece, it would take the Allied armies storming Berlin itself before the Reich would finally fall.

The conventional wisdom was that, short of obtaining unconditional surrender, the war would have to be fought again within twenty years, the only difference then being the inevitable further advances in weaponry, making the prospect of a third world war the more problematic.

Had the Allies been willing to accept a mere armistice, would the war have ended in 1944?

But then, if so, would there have been a nuclear war with Germany in 1959?

Ask Rod Serling. We couldn't say.

Samuel Grafton posits that the United States was overly self-centered and supercilious in its approach to foreign policy, thinking itself a special nation entitled to special privileges, such as being the central player in a world police force after the war. The internationalists favored this role while the isolationists believed falsely that the country was being robbed of its food through Lend-Lease.

Both views were wrong, says Mr. Grafton. The country was not so special, had no more right than any other nation to think itself the chief player in orchestrating such a world police force. Nor were the other nations taking U.S. food in undue quantities. Only 10% of the food crossing the seas came from the United States.

He recommends that the country disabuse itself of these notions and thereby develop a true post-war foreign policy, one which at present it did not have.

Dorothy Thompson comments on the criticism by John J. Pelley, president of the Association of American Railroads, of the statement in Dallas by Vice-President Henry Wallace critical of the general methods being employed in the United States by Big Business to void competition through the use of monopolistic practices. The Vice-President had cited as example the railroad cartel having established inequitable freight rates to favor industry in certain areas of the country over other areas. Likewise, the segment of the synthetic rubber industry utilizing the oil process not only was seeking a post-war tariff on the importation of natural rubber, but was also buying all the patents on the competing synthetic processes, seeking to insure a continuing monopoly on rubber production after the war.

Generally, the patents for inventions which might simplify life were bought by large companies to derail competition. What the Vice-President had sullied was the tendency of Big Business by use of these corrosive methods to subvert the concept of true free market capitalism, where competition and the best product coming out of that competition determined the market. Ms. Thompson thus believed that Mr. Pelley was out of line in condemning the statements of Mr. Wallace as "dry bones of ancient prejudice".

Raymond Clapper hoped that the Senate would interject into the proposed Connally Resolution to approve U.S. membership in a post-war international organization to preserve the peace and prevent aggression language which would strengthen its neutered phraseology as it emerged from the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Senator Pepper of Florida had sought in committee to have inserted language authorizing military force to solve aggression; but this proposed amendment was voted down 16 to 5. Senator Wagner of New York had sought to insert the word "suppress" in relation to aggression; that was voted down 15 to 6.

The problem thus arose that if the President, acting under authority of the Senate Resolution as currently worded, committed the country to such an organization and also committed the country to imposition of sanctions against nations engaged in aggression, the Senate could claim foul because the proposed amendments in the legislative history of the resolution had failed, despite that the general language of the resolution sufficed to provide ostensibly to the President the latitude to so commit the country. The legislative history would underscore the problem should the entire Senate vote down similarly offered amendments.

Mr. Clapper warns therefore that not providing explicit language in the resolution and trying to maintain sufficiently loose terms to insure support by diverse interests within the chamber, including former isolationists, could pose for the future a trap which could tie the hands of future presidents.

Drew Pearson also examines the proposed Resolution, focusing on how it came about in committee. He informs that Senators Ball, Burton, Hatch, and Hill, not members of the Foreign Relations Committee, had favored a resolution with teeth, authorizing an international police force. The Committee's Chairman, Tom Connally of Texas, had asked the Committee, after establishing that the majority favored the watered-down version, whether they would hear the four Senators as a matter of Senatorial courtesy. Majority Leader Alben Barkley of Kentucky favored the hearing and the Senators were heard.

Senator Pepper then sought public hearings before the Committee in which Catholic, Jewish, and Protestant groups who had labored internationally to insure post-war peace could be heard on the subject. Despite agreement from Hiram Johnson of California, a long-time isolationist, to allow such hearings, the Committee as a whole voted against the proposal, led by Senator Connally, arguing that public hearings would unduly delay the vote for two to three weeks.

To the consternation of Senator Connally, Senator Pepper then announced his intention to bring up on the floor of the full Senate the stronger resolution, authorizing an international police force to control aggression. But, in rejoinder, Senator Connally insisted that the objective before the full Senate was garnering sufficient votes for passage, not establishing ideal wording of the resolution. Senator Pepper begged to differ: the issue resolved itself not on practical politics but in the realm of moral conscience. The proper quest therefore was to achieve the resolution which best promised a post-war world secure from aggression and further war.

Stay tuned. Though you may be drooling and puling in your crib, 1943 cry-baby, your life is at stake.