Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that troops of the Canadian First Army and British Second, gaining two miles, had cut through the first concrete barrier of the Siegfried Line within the Reichswald fir forest, moving to within 2.5 miles of Kleve. A report from Ankara indicated that Kleve had been captured. Other units battled within Millingen, six miles northwest of Kleve. Nuetterden, 2.5 miles from Kleve, was seized.

The Nazis flooded the Roer River along the Ninth Army front by opening the spillways of the Schwammenauel Dam, causing the water level on the lower stretches of the river to rise a foot and a half within the space of an hour.

The First Battalion of the 309th Regiment of the 78th Division of the First Army advanced from the north a half mile to reach one side of the Schwammenauel and prepared to move across its 1,850 feet to effect its capture. Control of this largest of the eleven dams on the Roer, two of which were already under Allied control, would effectively prevent the Nazis from being able to flood the Cologne plain beyond the Roer, thus enabling the Allies to cross without incurring the danger of being swamped by an 18-foot wall of water.

It was not yet known whether the dam might have been booby-trapped by the Nazis. Just after midnight, three explosions were heard, but the dam remained ostensibly undamaged.

Berlin radio predicted a full-scale offensive by the Allied Armies all along the Western Front. General Eisenhower was said to have released a dense curtain of artificial fog to obscure movements of personnel in the area southeast of Aachen, at present without action.

A report out of Stockholm stated that barricades were everywhere along the refugee-clogged highway running east from Berlin to the Oder. Gangs of German troops were felling timber on both sides of the road to construct the barricades—signal of Hitler's coming rendezvous with death, when spring comes 'round.

A relatively small force of 150 American heavy bombers attacked a motor fuel depot at Duelmen, southwest of Muenster, and submarine pens again at Ijmuiden in Holland, for the fourth time in a week. Other targets in Holland were also hit.

The RAF conducted sorties over the front lines and a divebombing attack on a V-2 oxygen plant in Holland.

Nineteen American bombers and five fighters were lost along with two British fighters during the day.

Nazi losses the day before were 68 planes, five of which were jets. The Allies lost 26 planes the day before.

Airplane designer Peyton Magruder, of Glenn Martin Co., predicted that within ten to fifteen years, planes, powered by either jet or rocket propulsion, would be flying at speeds of 1,000 to 1,500 miles per hour. He informed that the pilotless V-2 rockets already flew in excess of 1,500 miles per hour at an altitude of 60 miles. Speed, he further informed, was sensed by the human body only on acceleration and deceleration, so that the trick was to provide for gradual inclination and declination in both directions of velocity.

On the Eastern Front, the Russians captured Elbing on the Baltic, 33 miles southeast of Danzig, and closed further the encirclement of Koenigsberg in East Prussia.

The Russians continued to pound German resistance along the Oder, but there was little word regarding details of the push toward Berlin. Indications were that the Army was regrouping in preparation for another major thrust.

In Italy, German counter-attacks had been repulsed by the Fifth Army in the Serchio Valley, at Strettola, three miles southeast of Masa and twenty miles southeast of La Spezia, and along the west coast. American artillery fire turned back another German counter-attack in the vicinity of Lama, nineteen miles from Lucca. Snow and ice, which had limited fighting for several weeks, was now turning to mud and slush in the sunshine.

In Manila, mines within the streets, plus mortar and machinegun fire from buildings, had slowed the advance of the Americans toward the docks south of the Pasig River, as fighting had reached a fierce level, according to General MacArthur.

As the Eleventh Airborne Division continued to press from the south, the 145th and 129th Infantry Regiments of the 37th Division gained 2,000 yards from the Pasig, as they headed into the Intramurous district, set on fire by the Japanese.

Considerable damage to the heart of the city had been wrought by enemy demolition, most of which, explained Maj. General Oscar Griswold, 14th Corps commander, was wanton, without military purpose, impacting only civilian structures. Food distribution to civilians had not been established for lack of adequate transportation facilities, the result being described as acute.

The 21st Bomber Command of General Curtis LeMay began its major raids on Tokyo this day with what was described as the largest raid yet of the war on the mainland of Japan by B-29's. Tokyo indicated that there were about 90 of the Superfortresses in the air, hitting in five waves for about one hour during the early afternoon, beginning at 2:30, 1:30 a.m. EWT. The raid enjoyed unusually clear weather and was able to report good results from air reconnaissance during the mission.

It marked the 52nd B-29 raid since their inception the prior June 15 and was the fifth mass B-29 raid on the home islands in February.

A blizzard hit New England, marking the heaviest accumulation of snow in the region in years.

The OPA promised easing of the New York fag shortage, short of rationing, in a plan which would enable an increase of 20 to 25 percent in supply, moving them from the black market into the legitimate mainstream of commerce.

On the editorial page, "Sidetracked" tells of the furor suddenly erupting among a coterie of usually disgruntled House members, Congressmen John Rankin of Mississippi, Clare Hoffman of Michigan, and Representative Rich of Pennsylvania, exercised over the order by the Office of Defense Transportation to cancel all conventions to avoid unnecessary travel. While not arousing a whimper of opposition in the country at large, these Congressmen were upset for the order having interfered with religious conventions and Masonic conventions.

"More of the Same" wonders at Thomas Dewey's strategy in making a speech the previous week in which he championed full international cooperation, even beyond that favored by the Administration. The piece first states that he should have taken this position during the campaign, but, in light of adverse Republican reaction to it, should have also said anything else but this remark, provided he wished to be in the running again for the 1948 nomination.

"No Free Choice" indicates that the Legislature, in moving to increase unemployment insurance benefits and extending the time of coverage, was, as with the original bill providing the insurance, acting not entirely out of free choice. Rather, there was coercion exerted by Washington, that if the State did not undertake the burden, the Federal Government would and impose the tax on employers anyway.

"New Departure" remarks on a change of policy invoked by a judge in Mecklenburg Superior Court who had reversed tradition when litigants failed to appear for civil cases, and set back the calendar a full week. Typically, apparently, cases were simply passed during the court session of the week until the litigants saw fit to appear. No more.

The excerpt from the Congressional Record has Representative John Rankin of Mississippi rising to protest the nixing of the farm census for want of funding. He cited the need for continued rural electrification, the specification for which the farm census could identify, while the Government the public would indemnify with high tension wires strung across the entire width of the country's strumming, humming tongue.

Drew Pearson tells of why the Big Three Conference had been postponed from the previous November 22, two weeks following the election. Prime Minister Churchill especially had desired the meeting at that time. FDR had tentatively agreed to the meet, but Josef Stalin refused to gather anywhere outside Russia.

Mr. Pearson next reports that Vice-President Truman had a new military aide, Col. Harry Vaughan of Missouri, the first time anyone could remember such an aide for the Vice-President. No explanation or speculation is provided as to the reason for the sudden assignment of a military aide. It could not be logically ascribed to the fact of the President going abroad, as no such assignment had occurred with Vice-President Wallace when the President had gone to Casablanca in January, 1943 or to Tehran and Cairo in November-December, 1943.

The column then instructs the American public not to begrudge temperatures in hotels fixed at 68 degrees, as luxury hotels in London endured 60-degree temperatures, and that during one of the coldest winters of the century in England, one beset by chilly winds blowing through broken window panes, with not enough glass to replace them. Cardboard and oilcloth had been used instead.

Attacks of V-1's and V-2's had spread the suffering in London among all classes equally and indiscriminately. The populace believed that during the Blitz of 1940-41, Hitler had instructed his bombers deliberately to concentrate on the east side of London, where most of the workers lived, to create havoc in industry and demoralize the working class of England. But the new pilotless weapons were not subject to being aimed with any accuracy. Many Londoners were camped out in the subways.

He next reports of Democratic National Chairman Robert Hannegan having had a substantial role in lining up Senators for the confirmation of Henry Wallace as Commerce Secretary and helping also thereby to heal the breach within the party. Vice-President Truman had also assisted the process.

Editor Louis Ruppel of the Chicago Herald-American was focusing public attention on the veteran's button issued to all returning veterans, showing their service in the war.

Marquis Childs, still with the 446th Bomber Group of the Eighth Air Force in England, tells of the high morale of the outfit, cooperating with each other in every conceivable way. The Group had the highest record of hits during the last week of December of any bomber group in the division, as confirmed by photographic reconnaissance.

One of the crew members was Captain Alfred Knopf, Jr., son of the publishers, Alfred and Blanche Knopf, (publishers of The Mind of the South in 1941, coincidentally having hit the bookstores precisely four years earlier, on February 10, prompting Mr. Knopf to visit W. J. Cash in Charlotte a week later). Captain Knopf had flown about half of the 30 missions which constituted a tour of duty.

The men were not seeking publicity, but they did want the people on the home front to understand their mission and not to take it for granted. Mr. Childs asserts, with probity, that the success of the D-Day invasion and liberation of France could not have been but for the work of the air forces, that, likewise, the bombing of Germany contributed substantially to the success of the Russian Army on the Eastern Front.

Hal Boyle, with the First Army, tells of Daisy Mae being the most contented cow in Europe since the Second Infantry Division had dug for her a foxhole. The cow had provided only a gallon of milk a day before the foxhole was supplied; now, she was gushing fully 2.5 gallons per day.

A letter writer opines that Senator Clyde Hoey must have been chagrined by his vote in favor of the George bill to divorce the Reconstruction Finance Corporation from the Department of Commerce, a move designed to assure the confirmation of Henry Wallace as Secretary of Commerce. The letter writer believes that Senator Hoey was led to the vote by Senators Harry Flood Byrd of Virginia and Josiah Bailey of North Carolina, that his own conscience would have dictated otherwise for the fact of Mr. Wallace's temperance and Christianity.

Another letter writer takes issue with the editorial which had speculated on whether the fall of Berlin would result in the end of the war, finding fault with the editorial's historical accuracy when it asserted that the fall of Richmond had resulted in the surrender of the South shortly afterward. The letter writer urges that the siege of Petersburg had followed the fall of Richmond and that the last meeting of the Confederacy had occurred in Danville, Va.

The editors quickly corrected the mistakes of the letter writer, that the fall of Petersburg came just before the fall of Richmond on April 2, 1865, a week before the surrender at Appomattox, and that it was in Charlotte that the Confederacy held its last meeting.

One of our favorite letter writers, despite on occasion exhibiting erratic orthography, apologizes for boring the readership with More on Blaze, Elliott Roosevelt's now infamous bull mastiff which was afforded transportation from Memphis, bumping three servicemen going home on furlough, one apparently to his father's funeral. But she wishes to correct her own errant phraseology in suggesting that the "Ode to Blaze" penned by a reader had been baiting of Hitler. She states that what she had actually meant to say was that the author gave the propaganda mill of the Nazis further fodder.

She informs that Walter Winchell had stated that "some fool did it in order to curry favor", presumably with the President, but she corrects that the favor to be curried in fact was among Roosevelt haters.

In another letter, Mrs. A. M. Waring, apparently kin to Mrs. C. C. Waring who had written her own poetic offering in support of Blaze, the previous Friday, adds her bit of verse to the mix, but sympathizing instead with Fala, bitten by his lady love with whom he was smitten, upon the occasion of their honeymoon spent in some anger vented in less than connubial bliss of a funny tune blent.

But, her lines do rhyme, even if her meter needs another reader with feet. For instance:

She hurt his pride, also his body;
In fact, he had to have a toddy.

Sort of like Frank and Bing at Christmas. Stranger things have happened.

But it still needs a little sprig of orange or lemon or something on top, such as, In fact, Fala needed badly one large, hot toddy. Voila. Meter by the feet, recognizing the change-up for the stop.