Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that the Fifth Army captured Cassano, 50 miles due east of Naples. At the same time, the Eighth Army, encountering little resistance, drove to within 18 miles of Foggia along the east coast of Italy.

A major breakthrough in fighter escort range had been achieved with the previous day’s raid on Emden in Germany. P-47 Thunderbolt fighters had flown an 800-mile roundtrip course to protect Flying Fortresses, no longer being forced to return from their missions unescorted and suffering flak attacks. The result was that the Fortresses could make the return leg of the journey comparatively without challenge from Luftwaffe fighters.

A piece tells of the reluctance by Allied officers and men to accept Italy as an ally in the war, despite the Badoglio Government’s efforts to become cozy with the Allied command. It was believed that a declaration of war by Italy upon Germany was imminent, as a means of signaling the government’s sincere intention to fight alongside the Allies.

On the Russian front, the Red Army had driven to the edge of the Dneiper River in several locations and had crossed to the western bank in other places.

The fall of Kiev appeared imminent as Nazi forces were fleeing the city in the established pattern, no doubt following a scorched-earth policy as they went, just as with Smolensk the previous week.

Associated Press correspondent Edwin Shanke tells of the impressions provided by veteran Swedish reporter Arvid Fredborg upon his recent return from Germany following two years spent observing the Third Reich. Fredborg had found the Fuehrer only partially in control of the country now, significant power having been vested in Heinrich Himmler and Martin Bormann, especially when Hitler had one of his many nervous breakdowns. The Fuehrer was being shielded by his subordinates from the dismal news from the various fronts--of which there was plentiful supply.

Deputy Chief of Staff of the Army, Lt.-General Joseph T. McNarney told reporters that the shift in emphasis months earlier by the Nazis from bomber to fighter production had signaled a change from an offensive to a defensive strategy. After the devastation to Germany wrought by the massive RAF-American bombing campaign, the only thing Nazi Germany desired now, said the general, was a stalemate.

Dr. Stephen Wise, president of the American Jewish Congress, predicted that the war would end in Europe by April 12, 1944. Just why he chose April 12 is not explained. The date was precisely one year before the death of President Roosevelt in Warm Springs, Georgia.

On the editorial page, "A New Horse" compares the outgoing Undersecretary of State, visionary Sumner Welles, to his replacement, Edward Stettinius, a hard-headed businessman apt to brook no nonsense when negotiating terms of peace with the Russians. The change suggested a passing of the time when diplomats held sway in the peace process. For the duration, predicts the piece, it was likely to be the hard-boiled military men and businessmen establishing the terms of the post-war world.

"Liquor Victory" reports of the acquittal of two North Carolina Highway Patrol officers on charges of aiding and abetting illicit liquor trade in Wilkes County. The press had left the courthouse dissatisfied with the verdict and contending that once again liquor interests had escaped justice.

"Vice-President?" finds little more than idle gossip the suggestion that Governor J. Melville Broughton might be named on the 1944 ticket as the vice-presidential nominee to replace Henry Wallace.

Still, the editorial correctly reckons that Henry Wallace was about to be thrown to the wolves as a New Deal sacrifice, to tamp down criticism of the Administration and to make a fourth term more palatable to conservative and Southern Democrats.

It would be so.

"Tomorrow" examines the dichotomy in the positions of Vice-President Wallace and the head of the American Legion, each taking polar opposite stands on the subject of social revolution and the New Deal. The piece predicts that, soon or late, the poles would come to loggerheads, perhaps in the election of 1944, provided the two major candidates were willing to face off on this issue of future government, whether it would continue to be big and bureaucratized, providing social services, or would accede to the wishes of those who favored decentralization, states' rights, and keeping welfare programs to a minimum in society.

Indeed, the issue ultimately would be joined in the streets by the mid-1950' and through the 1960's.

Raymond Clapper examines the confusion regarding Russia's post-war aims through the lens of an article by Dr. David Dallin, a Russian exile specializing in Russian history. Dr. Dallin believed that central to understanding Russian aims for the post-war world was its difference in perception of both the times preceding the war and of those to come following it. For the previous twenty years, Russia had seen the world not as being for a time at peace and for a time at war but rather on a continuum in which there were cyclical upheavals, where the lines between peace and war were usually blurred. For the ensuing period, Russia believed that the war would not end, as did the Western Allies, but rather that it would simply enter a period of remission, subsiding for a time, to be reignited at some other time. Thus, Russia was intent on shoring up its borders with buffer states, including parts of Poland and the Baltic States, in isolationist tradition. Germany would be a good trading partner to help rebuild war-torn Russia with its ten million killed thus far in the war and infrastructure shredded.

That which Mr. Clapper sees, by contrast, is an entry point for the West to supplant Germany vis à vis Russia by aiding in its rebuilding effort in ways which Germany could not for its own prospects for a strained and likely prolonged period of post-war rebuilding.

Dr. Dallin was more or less describing that which would become the source of ignition for the Cold War, compounded by the presence of nuclear weapons and rocket technology on the world stage.

The editorial research into the Social Security tax and the government's projections for its extension in the future to withholding 10% or 12% of income to fund it would prove true and then some.

Drew Pearson discusses the importance to the war effort of troop transports and who would supply them, the U.S. or Great Britain.

He concludes the segment with a bitter irony: the day before the Italians surrendered their fleet to the Allies, two U.S. bombers had sunk the Conte di Savoia, an Italian passenger liner capable of carrying 10,000 troops.