The piece speculates that the Soviets might be holding out pending a favorable commitment by the Western Allies to the Polish territorial dispute.

Former New York Governor Herbert Lehman, head of the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration, had reported that Russia was holding up relief shipments to Poland and Czechoslovakia, with speculation running that Russia was seeking to re-establish its 1920 boundaries by holding such shipments hostage as well as withholding their continued drive in the north against Warsaw.

The editorial allows that Stalin, if so, had plentiful reason to be suspicious of the Western Allies and thus could not be easily faulted for such a strategy. Russia had, after all, been barred from Munich in 1938, despite alliance with France to resist any aggression exerted against Czechoslovakia. It had been expelled from the League of Nations in 1939 for aggression against Finland, despite no action having been taken against initial German, Italian, and Japanese incidents of aggression committed in the early to mid-thirties. The Soviets had not been recognized by the United States until 1933 and not admitted to the League until the same year.

Thus, the better strategy than to be suspicious of Stalin's motives was to work the harder to establish finally the territorial boundaries to be accorded after the war and relieve the pressure of that issue so that offensive action on the Eastern Front might resume without further impediment.

The suspicion of deliberate withholding of force in Warsaw neglected the reality that much of the war strategy of the Allies, the British in Holland, the entire Italian campaign after gaining Naples, the North African campaign before the American landings in November, 1942, the Pacific island-hopping campaign, had been one of stalemate of German forces in one sector, cutting off or truncating their supply lines in the meantime with bombing, while another sector was made hot with battle. That strategy enabled rest, re-supply and reinforcement of Allied troops to prepare against weakened enemy forces. The holding up by the Soviets of relief shipments to Warsaw was likely out of concern that the supplies would wind up feeding the German soldiers, as had often occurred in battle-torn sectors. Of concern, however, was the report that the Russians had suddenly, without explanation, halted use of Russian bases to enable American shuttle bombing, the only method by which East Prussian war plants, now the primary remaining Reich manufacturing base, could be bombed.

Of an estimated 126 million citizens, about 48 million voted, a turnout nationally of 37.9 percent, leaving aside the percentage of actually eligible voters. But on the same analysis of total population to votes, in South Carolina, turnout was 5.8 percent, in Mississippi, 8.6, in Alabama, 9, in Georgia, 11, in Virginia, 14, in Louisiana, 15.5, in Tennessee, 18.1, and in Texas, 18.4 percent. Reducing the overall population to eligible voters, the percentages of turnout would be likely even lower, about one percent, for instance, in South Carolina.

The Southern states which had abandoned the poll tax had substantially higher rates of turnout, North Carolina, for instance, which had voted out the practice in 1920, having had a 24 percent turnout, twice that of its northern neighbor and four times that of its southern neighbor.

The composition of the Senate was unchanged, 57 Democrats and 38 Republicans, with one Progressive. Yet, the character of the Senate had been altered considerably, now far less comprised of isolationists, with twenty new Senators, thirteen of whom were Democrats, each being internationalists.

While no one expected problems with approval of an acceptable peace plan, provided a suitable one was presented to the Senate, it remained somewhat subject to speculation as to how the new Congress would behave with regard to domestic legislation.

The column next examines again the plight of Vice-President Henry Wallace, finds the President fence-sitting on what job to offer him, whether, as Mr. Wallace desired, the leadership of the Commerce Department, or some other position, in which he had indicated his lack of interest.

Shortly, the President would nominate Mr. Wallace as new Secretary of Commerce to replace aging Jesse Jones, just as Mr. Pearson had already predicted.

Congressmen were beginning to seek revision of the Corrupt Practices Act relating to Federal election contributions, to disallow the kind of contributions made by Joseph Pew of Sun Oil Company and his sister during the campaign. They had contributed substantial money to Missouri Republican state and city committees despite the fact that they both hailed from Pennsylvania.

Finally, he remarks of James Byrnes having been assigned as his assistant his old law partner from South Carolina who had joined the Army and was sent to him by the Army. Mr. Byrnes told his old friend that he always had wanted to discipline him and now he had him where he wanted.

She suggests a cold war with Germany as being a necessitous condition to maintain should the fragile coalition among the Allies be sustained after the war, for the coalition presently was held together only by the tenuous bailing wire of its status as antithesis to Hitler and Germany.

Ms. Thompson reiterates her thesis that Germany could not surrender to any one entity, for the disparate Allied policies among the four principal European countries, and so had chosen to fight on, despite that decision entailing complete madness. The Allies had afforded the Germans no other choice because there was no defined, unified policy as to how Germany would be treated upon its unconditional surrender.

In Europe, the Germans still held under some degree of siege virtually all of the Channel ports in France and Belgium except Cherbourg, a condition which had exacerbated the bottleneck in shipping to the Western Front.

But, the military leaders in the Pacific had warned that diminishing shipments of supplies to that theater would enable the Japanese to restore their shipping and aircraft capability and thus prolong the war substantially.

So, the two theaters were joined in a tug of war for access to equipment and men via constricted shipping channels.

Perhaps, he ventures, had the British not been utilizing ordnance on the ELAS in Greece, there might have been enough at Echternach to break through the German offensive line a day earlier.

Part of the answer lay in how long it would take to force the Germans into a decisive confrontation on the battlefield.

Part of the answer lay in how willing Americans were to effect better and fuller coalition with the Allies.

All of the Allied peoples were involved in the war and so the answer lay, if anywhere, within each individual's willingness to commit to the war effort to bring it to conclusion.