Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that the U. S. first Army had advanced one to two miles through the Hurtgen Forest, overrunning the village of Germeter, to reach the town of Hurtgen, seven miles southwest of Duren on the road to Cologne. Another column advanced to the village of Vassenack.

One officer described the fighting as "Indian country" for its fierceness.

In the drive toward Rotterdam and the Meuse River, American and Polish troops advancing over the Mark River had to abandon their position for heavy German resistance. But the Germans had been forced to destroy the Geertruidenburg bridge over the Meuse north of Tilburg. The Allies were firing upon the other two bridges at Moerdijk.

The British Commandos and Canadians attacking Walcheren Island had moved to eliminate all of the Germans from the island, save those still in Vlissingen, bypassing Domburg and knocking out at least two of the Nazis' five big guns still operating to block Antwerp from Allied use. South of the Schelde Estuary, the Allies captured Sluis and were inside Knocke after completely taking out the German 64th Division and its 2,500 remaining men. The pocket had been reduced to three small positions, at Knocke, Cadsand, and Heyst.

Bad weather continued to hamper the availability of air support for the front, but American fighter bombers had destroyed the German power plant at Ahrweiler and a hundred-car freight train near Rheinbach. Some 1,100 heavy bombers hit the synthetic oil plant at Merseburg, as well as other oil facilities in the Ruhr and railyards at Bielefeld and Rheine. These bombers met Luftwaffe fighters in strength for the first time in a month, and early reports had it that 36 German planes had been shot down.

The RAF again hit Cologne, for the fifth time in six nights, adding to the target list Oberhausen, until this raid, the least struck city of the Ruhr. Oberhausen served as a rail traffic center for the Western Front and also was an industrial center.

London Daily Mail correspondent Walter Farr reported from Stockholm that the Germans would definitely soon launch V-2 rockets against the United States. The Germans, after experimentation, he further elucidated based on information from a knowledgeable informant, were convinced that the V-2's could be launched against England on a large scale.

Mr. Farr was informed that the V-2 had been fired against England from experimental stations in Germany and Norway and that other bases in Holland and Denmark could be used for the purpose. The first V-2's carried a payload of one ton of explosives, but rockets capable of transporting larger payloads were in development, the capability of payload being inversely proportional to the distance the rocket would travel. The rockets, propelled by gasoline or other liquid, reached an apogee of 15 to 50 miles before arcing back to earth at 500 to 1,000 miles per hour. The Nazis had a half dozen sizes suitable for striking England and, while having rockets which could reach the U.S., they were concentrating on those designed to cross no further than the Channel.

Of course, this was more poppycock propaganda of Herr Doktor Goebbels, a lot of wishful thinking anent technology which would take another 12 years of development by the Soviet Union and the United States post-war to achieve, that is a long-range rocket firing capability. To hit the United States, the Nazis would have needed to send planes or submarines with rocket launching capability. Such launching capability did not exist except with respect to the slow and cumbersome V-1's. Nor would there have been any realistic opportunity by this juncture in the war to get submarines or planes within any reasonable range of either coast of the United States. The Nazis were again seeking to employ scare tactics to achieve more favorable terms of immediate surrender, short of destruction of the Nazi State.

Similarly, the Reich had reported that Field Marshal Erwin Rommel had died of his wounds from strafing on the French front, not as later reported after the war, by his own coerced hand on option of standing trial for treason before the foregone conclusion of the People's Court for his alleged participation in the July 20 plot on Hitler.

This report was made in the context of drawing a similar fate for Field Marshal Albert Kesselring, commander of the Germans in Italy, who had been reported wounded in his automobile near Bologna by Allied strafing. The extent of his injuries was not yet reported.

Uncle Albert, as he was affectionately called by his troops, would live until 1960, apparently not being ultimately implicated by Der Fuehrer in the plot. In the end, Der Fuehrer realized that the chief conspirator was Der Fuehrer.

Whether Uncle Albert ever got to hear Johnny and the Moondogs in Hamburg, we don't know. Kesselring was also referred to as Smiling Albert by the Allies because he smiled away.

The British and Yugoslav Partisans of Marshal Tito had cleared a hundred miles of the Dalmatian Coast, including the harbors of Split, Methovic, and Dubrovnik—the latter being where Rosemary was.

Polish and Indian troops advanced several miles north from captured Predappio, moving toward Forli in the Po Valley, and effected joinder with the other parts of the Eighth Army which had established the bridgehead west of the Ronco River above Meldola.

Canadian troops of the Eighth Army reached the primary Fosso-Ghiaia crossing on Highway 16, less than five miles from Ravenna.

The Fifth Army, operating south of Bologna, cleared the village of Casetta, two miles from the branch highway to Imola, in turn twenty miles northwest of Forli.

Along the west coast, a heavy enemy counter-attack at Catagnana forced a withdrawal by the Brazilian troops in the area.

Carigara on Leyte Island in the Philippines appeared ready to fall to the American troops, with one force of the First Cavalry Division in the town and another less than two miles away. The 24th Division was stalled by a blown-up bridge beyond Tunga.

To the south on Leyte, units of the 24th Corps continued to push west across the island's hills, nearing Catmon Mountain, sixteen miles from captured Catmon Hill, seeking to attack the Japanese supply depot on Ormoc Bay. Their trek was mostly downhill at this point on the western half of the island.

The British in Northern Burma had captured the important junction at Mawlu, 92 miles southwest of Myitkyina and 180 miles north of Mandalay.

The Russians in Hungary were within 30 miles of Budapest, penetrating beyond Lajosmizse, as late reports indicated they had reached Kunsgentmiklos, 28 miles from the capital. Keeskemet, a city of 80,000 and the last major barrier before Budapest, had been captured after it had been reported the previous day abandoned by the Nazis. Some 1,500 German and Hungarian prisoners had been captured during the prior 24 hours, bringing the total in the Hungarian campaign to 5,518. Some 2,000 Germans had been killed in the battle for Keeskemet, and another 1,000 in the taking of the rail town Tedel and 300 at Kecel.

In Mishawaka, Indiana, 5,200 employees of the U. S. Rubber Company plant which manufactured self-sealing fuel tanks for B-29 bombers, tanks which prevented explosion upon rupture by bullets, remained on strike for the third day regarding differences with management over production schedules.

The inventor of ethyl gasoline, Thomas Mideley, Jr., of Columbus, Ohio, died at age 55, having been ill with polio for four years.

F.C.C. Chairman James Fly resigned his post, effective November 15.

President Roosevelt sent Donald Nelson back to China to establish a War Production Board for the Chinese, to increase their efficiency in war production. The move had the complete approval and urging of Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek.

Garter belts and suspenders might soon stretch more, but girdles would continue to be scarce, for the fact that the War Production Board had revoked an order which had prohibited use of elastic fabrics six inches in width or less for anything except military or industrial use, the implication being that girdles were made of elastic fabric more than six inches in width and thus still subject to restriction for military use. Regardless, keep touching those toes so that you won't need one anytime soon in any event. You never know how long this war might wind up lasting.

The O.P.A. took leather-reinforced gym shoes off the ration list, ladies, and so you have no excuse.

In Los Angeles, a wife and husband were divorced after 47 years of marriage. Chief complaint was her objection that he smoked cigarettes.

He, he, he.

On the editorial page, "Poor Poor" remarks on North Carolina's lower than national average welfare disbursements. Welfare payments were paid proportionately, half by the Federal Government, a quarter by the State, and a quarter by the county. This system encouraged free spending of welfare money, as the local offices were only providing one in every four dollars. So, argues the editorial, North Carolina's low standing in payments could be interpreted as parsimony.

"Loophole" comments on a 1942 Supreme Court decision delivered by Justice James Byrnes, now War Mobilizer, in the case of U.S. v. Local 807, 315 US 521, with Chief Justice Harlan Stone dissenting. The Teamsters of New York had been accused of using threats of violence against non-union truck owners entering New York City. The Government had sought prosecution under the Anti-Racketeering Act, but the Court had ruled that the Act did not apply to union activities, specifically exempted under the Act. The Court had pointed out that crimes committed in the course of union activity could, as with any such conduct, be prosecuted by state and local authorities, but did not fall under the Anti-Racketeering Act.

In consequence, since the decision, trucking firms operating in New York either hired Teamsters or paid union wages.

The editorial thus advocates the passage of some new Federal legislation which would protect genuine labor organizing activities but which would also subject criminal activities in furtherance thereof to criminal sanction under racketeering laws.

Sub silentio to the editorial's advocacy was that local and state authorities were cowed by the political power of the local unions from undertaking too much scrutiny of any such nefarious activities.

"First Stone" comments on the suggestion of Senator Kenneth Wherry of Nebraska to the Mecklenburg County Republican Party that North Carolina was not at all safe for President Roosevelt in the election the following Tuesday. The crowd had been small at the Armory. But that fact did not prove daunting to Senator Wherry who suggested it only meant that people were at home thinking things over. He stated that the President's foreign policy was nebulous, that Governor Dewey had set forth a policy which was clear and bold.

"Private" observes that the decision whether Wake Forest College, then in the village of Wake Forest near Raleigh, and Meredith College, the woman's college in Raleigh, should combine on one campus in Wake Forest, was a purely private matter for the Baptists who governed both colleges. It was not ripe for public debate. However the decision would be resolved, assures the piece, both colleges would continue to provide for the betterment of educational quality within the state.

Drew Pearson indicates that the ultimate reason for the recall of General Joseph Stilwell from China was that he had served an ultimatum on Chiang Kai-shek to step up the war in China against the Japanese, and Chiang had taken offense at such temerity. U. S. Ambassador to China, Clarence Gauss, had likewise suggested the same type of cooperation by Chiang, but he, too, had been recalled at the beck of the Generalissimo.

Samuel Grafton contrasts the Western Allied view of war crimes, as defined by the United Nations Commission for Investigation of War Crimes, set up in 1943, with that of the Soviets. The Commission, chaired by Sir Cecil Hurst, former head of the World Court in The Hague, had defined war crimes to be violations of the rules of war, not the war itself, not the invasion of foreign countries. Under this delimited definition, until recently, Hitler, Goebbels, and Goering had not been included on the list of a few hundred Nazi war criminals. They first had to commit the "second crime" of directly violating the rules of war, as by ordering or committing atrocities against civilians or prisoners of war.

Dorothy Thompson compares the defeat of the Japanese Fleet in the Second Battle of the Philippine Sea in and around Leyte Gulf to be comparable to the defeat of the Spanish Armada by the British, giving Britain supremacy over the seas since that time in 1805. Rule, Britannia! had been the theme of the ensuing age on the high seas.

Marquis Childs, back in New York, suggests that, with the proportion of women voters slated to be the largest for any election in the history of the country, the outcome in a close race might be determined by women.

Hal Boyle, still with the Ninth Evacuation Hospital in France, reports on October 25 that the nurses of the hospital had a pep song, the refrain of which went that the Ninth Evac. would lead the way to health and victory. They had sung it when they left England for Africa in 1942 but no more. They no longer felt like singing pep songs.

And Mrs. D. S. Beatty responds in a letter to the editor to the frontal attack made upon her by Mr. Hartis the previous week--as well as the other, two weeks earlier, by Mr. Hacker, both of whom we assume to be one and the same, as apparently did Mrs. Beatty--for her ardent stand in favor of the President, resisting the undoubted temptation to call the two gentlemen uncultured louts of the lowest order.

Framed Edition

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