Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that the Nazis had brought in fresh reinforcements to the Normandy campaign in the area of Caen, but the British Second Army continued to force the lines from the southwest in the area of Esquay, from Troarn to the east, and from the west at newly won Marcelai, had encircled Caen except for an arc of eleven miles. The western movement, had approached to within a half mile of one of the city's principal airfields. The German attempts to break the British line between the Orne and Odon Rivers had failed, as the British inflicted heavy casualties and destroyed two dozen German tanks.

In the American sector, the troops made a series of small attacks toward St. Lo, where gains were reported. Likewise, the resistance at Cap De La Hague, on the northwestern tip of the Peninsula, was stated to be diminishing.

American bombers attacked three air bases in Northern France and another in Belgium. The Fifteenth Air Force out of Italy hit Vienna and targets in Yugoslavia. The RAF had also struck at Vienna the night before.

The German V-1 attacks were reported to have increased, striking several locations in southern England and causing several dozen deaths, including children at a children's hostel, leaving the pitiful sight of broken toys alongside the dead. The children had been displaced to the location the previous March when another hostel had been burned by incendiary bombs.

In Italy, the Fifth Army reached the vicinity of Cecina, twenty miles from Leghorn. Other forces moving inland reached to within seven miles of Siena, as French troops on the right side of the line had reached to within ten miles of the town.

The Eighth Army captured the Lake Trasimeno town of Castiglione Del Lago, site of the castle of the Knights of Malta.

German casualties all along the wide line were said to be heavy.

Declaring Finland to be a Nazi puppet, the United States, predictably, broke off diplomatic relations with the country. The move came in the wake of unequivocal cooperation between Finland's highest officials and the Nazi occupation forces, allowed into the country to fend off the Russian advance. The letter from Cordell Hull expressed the longstanding friendship between America and Finland but that recent events made cessation of relations imperative, notwithstanding that amity.

Meanwhile in Russia, the Red Army moved toward the Berezina River northeast of Minsk. Two flanking forces approached, one from the north and one from the south. Other forces stabbed an opening into the Gomei-Minsk Highway. General Ivan Bagramian's troops were within 81 miles of Lithuania and 48 miles from Latvia.

A map on an inside page, which we do not have, had showed the positions of the Allied armies moving through Europe from the east, west, and south, approximately equidistant from Berlin, that distance being about 650 miles from each direction.

On Saipan, a nest of Japanese holding out on the southeast tip of the island since the invasion June 14, had been eliminated finally on Tuesday.

Another inside page provides a first-person account written by Tech Sergeant Mason Brunson of South Carolina, detailing his harrowing experience during the landings on Saipan.

A map on the page provides a quick view of the pathways afforded B-29 bombers to strike Japan and the Philippines, from both bases in China and, soon, from Saipan. American Navy Task Force 58 is also noted. Another inside page holds a map of the Pacific islands, demonstrating the route to Japan.

Another story on the latter page tells of the rescue of three Army parachutists, who, after a practice jump into the Grand Canyon June 21, landed and became stranded on top of the isolated Tonto Plateau. It was the second reported instance of this type occurring in the Grand Canyon in recent months. Get 'em up, Scout.

Herbert Brownell was unanimously elected chairman of the Republican National Committee to replace Harrison Spangler. The move was merely to conform the campaign manager of Thomas Dewey's campaign to the scope of the national election, as the chairman was responsible for directing the presidential campaign.

On the editorial page, "Prescription" remarks on three recommendations made by the retiring Mecklenburg Grand Jury: that the city hire twenty new police officers, some to be black, to patrol primarily the black sections of town where crime tended to be highest; that assistants be hired for court Solicitor John Carpenter to help alleviate the substantial backlog of criminal cases in Superior Court; and that the high incidence of adultery within the black section of the city be arrested by greater vigilance and enforcement of statutes criminalizing adultery, and by insuring support from illegitimate fathers to their children born out of wedlock.

Now, it seems, the Federal Grand Jury in the Middle District of North Carolina wishes to do the contrary, that children born outside wedlock should receive no support, at least should they be so unfortunate as to be born during an election campaign, under penalty of making the effort at support look as a Federal campaign law violation.

But, that's just our opinion. What's yours, neighbor?

"Correction" reminds that Thomas Dewey, age 42, would set no record for youth if elected to the presidency. Theodore Roosevelt was two months younger when he acceded to the position after the assassination in 1901 of President William McKinley.

It does not point out, although implicit, that Mr. Dewey would, however, have been the youngest elected president, that place in history since 1961, having been occupied by President Kennedy.

The piece also instructs that William Jennings Bryan, in 1896, in his first of three Democratic nominations, was the youngest nominee of a major party, being then only 36, a year beyond the Constitution's minimum age for the office. Mr. Bryan, subsequently notorious for his role as special prosecutor in the Scopes Trial in Dayton, Tennessee, in 1925, immediately after which he died, had also been nominated in 1900 and 1908. And so, in 1900, he also remained younger than any other nominated person in United States history.

In any event, the editorial concludes that Mr. Dewey had no lock on youth in the history of the Republic's presidential nominees.

"Fair Play" finds the radio networks seeking a level sound field by banning from air play the song "Don't Change Horses", for its implicit political message favoring FDR. Never mind that the song was authored by the same cadre who had brought to the world "Mairzy Doats". (Don't start playing that one in our heads aggin, as it nearly drove us crazy the last time.)

But the piece finds that, for all the good intentions, the radio boys and girls had not gone far enough. "Don't Sweetheart Me" likewise ought be banned until November for its clear subliminal support offered Governor Dewey, thought the editorial. Likewise, "I'll Get By", "I'll Be Around", "I'll Be Seeing You", "Time Waits for No One", and "Long Ago and Far Away", it suggests. Those, not to mention, "Is You Is Or Is You Ain't My Baby?"

It concludes that these censors be durned, they'd hum as they pleased, and were working on a campaign song for the Governor, "How Come You Do Me Like You Dewey?"

We heard one in summer 1964 for that campaign: "I'll in the Water".

By 1972, the song had been changed to "How Come You Dew Clause Like You Done Me?"

By August, 1974, the song would be "Au Revoir, I'd You Ma".

Faux Cue...

"GOP Plans" finds the Republicans erring in the manner warned not to do by Wendell Willkie: endorsing program by program the essentials of the New Deal while merely pledging to administer them more efficiently, as they had in 1936 and 1940.

It provided little choice.

"A Warning" echoes the sentiments conveyed by General George C. Marshall, chief of staff of the Army, and Admiral Ernest King, chief of staff of the Navy, that, upon their return to the States from Normandy, they were appalled to find too much optimism among the American people, to the effect that the war was as good as won. A long, hard fight, they had reminded, still lay ahead to liberate France and conquer Germany. There was no cause for celebration, despite the success thus far and considerable progress in Normandy.

Dorothy Thompson examines the Republican convention's foreign policy plank, finds it wanting of specificity, guilty as charged by Wendell Willie of the deficiency. Attesting to its wobbly nature, subject to anyone's interpretation, staunch isolationist-nationalist Robert McCormick, publisher of the Chicago Tribune, had editorialized in favor of the plank's generality, while Mr. Willkie compared it to the Republican foreign policy plank of 1920 which led to the disastrous rejection of membership in the League of Nations after Warren Harding's election, foredooming the organization to failure.

President Roosevelt appeared to be leading the country down the road of disillusion by being too timid, in fear of alienating the Allies, not insisting on adherence to the Atlantic Charter principles of assuring the Four Freedoms internationally, of renouncing imperialism, not proposing a true international organization backed by force but rather one primarily governed by the Big Four.

The Republicans were advocating only an international organization backed by peace forces, but left the ultimate determination to the Senate's powers to affirm treaties by a two-thirds vote. This statement appeared to go just far enough to provide superficial articulation of the ideal but not the genuine commitment to see it made a reality.

Governor Earl Warren, in his keynote address to the convention, had been more specific than the platform in advocating cooperation among peace-loving nations and the establishment of a tribunal for settlement of international disputes. But internationalism would require more than these tenets, asserts Ms. Thompson, the positive commitment to achieving international cooperation.

Nationalism was not entirely at odds with the concept, as long as it had as its central principle the resistance of the country to becoming acquiescent to imperialistic aims of other countries, and it did not, itself, become an ideal in which such notions would be catalyzed.

Drew Pearson discusses the law of unintended consequences which could play havoc on the disproportionate electoral influence enjoyed by the South given its popular vote, excluding black voters, should it go through with its threat to throw the election into the House of Representatives by switching votes to someone other than the popular vote winner in each state. For if it were to do so, opines Mr. Pearson, then, undoubtedly, a move to abolish the Electoral College would ensue. And if it were abolished, so too would go with it, the way of the wind, the inordinate political power of the South in holding fully a quarter of the nation's electoral votes while only providing 12.5% of its popular vote.

The anomalous result had been that California had three times the popular votes of Texas while Texas had one more electoral vote, New York, six times the popular vote of the Lone Star State, but only twice as many electoral votes.

Prior to the Civil War, when slaves were deemed to be chattel and not citizens such that they were included in the numeration for purposes of determining electoral representation, the South's electors were in exact proportion to the relative population, as with all other states. But since the Civil War, ironically, the denial of the vote to blacks had produced the aforementioned anomaly, with its consequent power afforded the white South.

Thus, the caveat was presented that striving for too much power would throw the proverbial illegitimate baby out with the dirty water.

Mr. Pearson also relates of the survey conducted by Edward L. Bernays in New York State on behalf of Governor Dewey when he ran for that office in 1942, to the end of providing Mr. Dewey a file of index cards on which were compiled the essential data necessary for convivial conversation with each political captain in each town and village within the state. Their hobbies, likes, and dislikes, and spouses, number of children, etc., all were committed to these cards for the gubernatorial candidate Dewey to study. So it might be extended, this Bernays Survey, to the whole of the country to good effect for the elephantine memory of Governor Dewey.

Marquis Childs examines the speech on Tuesday night by former President Herbert Hoover, in which he had done what he had not in two previous appearances before the convention since departing office in March, 1933, that being to surrender the torch to a new generation of leadership--and, in the case of Governor Dewey, one born in the twentieth century.

But, continues Mr. Childs, President Hoover spoke confusingly of the foreign policy aims of the Republicans for the post-war period. On the one hand, he favored maintenance of a strong alliance of sovereign nations, not a super-government, while on the other, he promoted the freedom of all nations, including Poland.

Questions arose thus as to how both goals could be achieved simultaneously, for President Roosevelt reportedly had assured Premier Stalin at Tehran that the United States would not fight Russia over Poland. How then would this ideal of freedom for all peoples be achieved? Prime Minister Churchill advocated division of Europe into three spheres of influence. Would the Republicans agree with this approach? Did it assure liberation of all peoples in Europe? But would not assuring absolutely that freedom result, rather than in a sustained peace, in a continued war, this time with Russia?

These questions were indeed the ones which would linger after the war, the lack of firm answers to which winding up causing what became then known as the Cold War.

Samuel Grafton again comments on the atmosphere of the Republican convention. The Dewey girls or the Dewey models, as the case might be, had disappeared from the Stevens Hotel, Mr. Grafton deciding a Congressional Committee ought be got up to determine their true origin, whether as loyal beauties or recruited rooties. In any event, they had been replaced by a plump quartette of men playing musical instruments.

Whether they got around to playing "Why Do You Dewey Like You Bricker?" was not indicated.

The convention itself had sought to play to middle America and its defined sense of tradition, downplaying any hint of controversy or dissension.

The only note breaking this otherwise uninterrupted monotony was the speech of Clare Boothe Luce in which she had blamed the Democrats for "G.I. Jim", the dead soldiers of the war, and given credit to the Republicans for the preservation of G.I. Joe. Her stridency had caused some cognitive dissonance among the delegates not there to cause a stir.

"They wish only, bless their hearts, to elect as President the kind of nice young man whom they would like to see come calling on daughter."

Thus, that is what they got, the Man on the Wedding Cake.

Roger D. Greene, writing from Normandy on June 21, tells of a German soldier's letter to his sweetheart left behind in a quickly abandoned castle. Virtually everything was left behind except the good wines they brewed, the cognac, and the calvados. They had left the champagne. Whether any raspberries remained with the strawberries, Mr. Greene did not impart.