Site Ed. Note: Trying to hold the new winter line "at all costs for at least eight weeks", the Nazis, reports the front page, made nine separate thrusts into the Fifth Army positions in the area of Venafro but were repulsed in each such counter-offensive.

The Eighth Army along the Adriatic coast and inland also encountered enemy counter-attacks and successfully repelled them, solidifying its hold on the heights overlooking the Sangro River.

American bombers meanwhile attacked the only remaining ball-bearing plant in Italy, located southwest of Turin, inflicting heavy damage.

In the Pacific, it was reported that two groups of Japanese infantry, numbering several hundred, had landed in Empress Augusta Bay on Bougainville, one coming via barges during the weekend from Buka in the north and the other arriving from the south, in an attempt to establish pincers against the Marines defending the area since their landing November 1.

On the Russian front, General Nikolai Vatutin's First Ukrainian Army continued to move rapidly, 27 miles the previous day, despite the first snows of winter in the western Ukraine, against the retreating Nazis north and west of Kiev.

Gunnar Kumlien, in the third of his series on German-occupied Italy, tells of the popularity of the Catholic Church and Pope Pius XII throughout Europe, that the Pope and the Church were perceived as beacons of peace. Nazis stood guard outside Vatican City, being informed by German propaganda that the Holy See was a refuge for Jews, defended by heavily armed Swiss Guards. In fact the Swiss Guard had only recently been provided live ammunition to replace their usual blanks.

A piece reports that the German propaganda machine was busy studying the reasons for the 1918 collapse of German morale and then shoring up internal defenses while pouring forth encouragement to try to avoid a similar home front collapse.

The French Committee of National Liberation voted to relieve General Henri Giraud of his duties as co-president, leaving him in charge of the military, making General Charles De Gaulle the sole president. The entire Committee was reshaped, eliminating all Communists. All of the changes were unanimously ratified, including the approval by General Giraud. The Communists criticized the Gaullists for undertaking too rapid changes in the constituency of the Committee.

Hal Boyle relates several vignettes culled from Stars and Stripes celebrating the first anniversary of the Allied landings in North Africa. Among them is quoted a quatrain deemed one of the best "Pup Tent Poems", that from an anonymous captain after the victory in Sicily, when the Allied soldiers were giving out candy wholesale to the native population. The poem was entitled "post mortem". Its simple verse was:

The indigent Sicilian
With freedom in his belly
who once cheered Garibaldi
Now asks for Caramelli!

And Pal, a seventeen-year old Airedale residing in Albany, N.Y., was dutifully awaiting, despite a stroke, the return of his master, Tech Sergeant Franklin Higgins, on his way home, expected the next day. Pal had stopped eating the day before but hope was alive that he would live long enough for the expected homecoming.

Well, we hope Pal hangs in there. Best of luck, Pal. Feed him some of that rationed food for a few days, maybe a nice lamb chop or two with a rich Italian caramel sauce, made from Kraft caramels of course, just right as Thanksgiving approaches. Hmmm-mmm.

But, as with the faithful Argos upon the return of the twenty-year absent Odysseus, Pal would likely die no sooner than he laid eyes on his intermittently absent master. That’s life, Pal.

On the editorial page, "Coming Flood" forecasts a flood of demands by Labor in the wake of the resolution of the coal crisis by giving in to the coal miners’ demands. Farmers and railroad workers would, it predicts, follow suit and likely receive the same treatment. The prospect stood, suggests the piece, as a greater threat to the war effort than inflation.

"Fellow Travelers" assails again Senator Reynolds for having voted against ratification of the Moscow Agreements. In his own defense, he had offered letters from Poles, Latvians, and Estonians objecting to the pact as a power game leaving out the smaller countries. The piece finds the support for Bob’s position from Poles, Latvians, and Estonians especially ironic as he had spent much of his eleven years in the Senate fighting against immigration from Europe.

He had also introduced into the Congressional Record a letter from Upton Close, as reprinted in the column, objecting to the pact on the basis, inter alia, that it did not provide any statement of policy for the war against Japan and its aftermath.

All in all, the editorial sums up the position and its support as further evidence of Bob’s close amity with the Axis cause.

"Sage Advice" finds the recommendation by author Thomas Mann of the use of force to control his native Germany post-war to be sound doctrine, the only way to prevent the outbreak of World War III. For, as it quotes Mann, “We cannot expect too much of the human race.”

Raymond Clapper argues, as the first of the United Nations organizations was set to begin the previous day, the Relief and Rehabilitation Administration, that it would be men of vision, courage, and trust who would prevent the next war, not bureaucratic machinery. He offers as examples Cordell Hull, Bernard Baruch, and Jesse Jones, each basing their long successful tenures in government on common sense decisions and interpersonal trust, not smooth-running administrative machinery, always doomed to break down. As to the latter, he cites the League of Nations.

A piece prepared by the editors chronicles the events leading to the Armistice on November 11, 1918.

Drew Pearson writes further of the new organization, finding it to resemble the League of Nations in its structure, with the Big Four acting as the Central Committee, responsible for daily operations, leaving out the smaller nations, while 44 nations comprised the Assembly which would meet only once or twice a year to vote on policy.

He also interjects that the Moscow Conference should have discussed the rubber situation, as the shortage of tires in the United States for civilian transportation on buses and shipping on trucks was due perforce to curtail shipments of tires to Russia under Lend-Lease.

He began his column by elucidating some of the controversy surrounding Vice-President Wallace's October 21 trip to Dallas, at least among the members of the Salesmanship Club.

What the members of the Leadership Club thought of it was not provided, but the trip went well and Mr. Wallace was greeted with approval in most quarters.

By coincidence, twenty years and three days later, Adlai Stevenson, another proponent of internationalism and at the time U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, would visit Dallas and receive a less than cordial welcome, at one juncture being spat upon by two SMU students and hit on the head with an anti-United Nations sign brandished by a woman.

Samuel Grafton remarks on a new sense of practical realization pervading Washington in developing policy for the war, one which had led to the Moscow Agreements, a cold-eyed determination of the enemy’s strength versus one’s own, then proceeding to make policy informed by those assessments.

The lesson, he offers, could be learned from the Russians in the methods they had employed during the previous year of victory since Stalingrad. In one example, the Russians had built a 100-mile long temporary railroad across Lake Ladoga during the siege of Leningrad in order to transport supplies and soldiers to the city. No one, least of all the Nazis, had conceived in advance such a creative solution to the problem confronting the Russians to overcome the siege line. The same sort of thinking, suggests Mr. Grafton, was needed throughout the Allied cause.

He recommends the recent documentary film, "The Battle of Russia", part of Frank Capra's series titled "Why We Fight", made under the auspices of the United States War Department.

Well, Pal, that's all for today. Chow down and have a hopeful tomorrow.