Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that in the toughest fight ever faced by the Marines, they had nevertheless managed to seize the southern airfield on Iwo Jima, Motoyama No. 1, after the 27th Marine Division, aided by the ship-to-shore bombardment and searchlights of Navy ships, broke up an early morning counter-attack by 900 enemy troops charging down the runway of Motoyama. The Marines forged a line, varying in width from a thousand yards to 2.5 miles, all the way across the island, stretching from Suribachi Yama to the northern edge of the newly won airfield. The total area thus far won by the Fifth Marine Corps amounted to about two square miles of the eight square miles of Iwo.

Admiral Nimitz stated that losses were relatively light moving across the southern end of the island but were heavier on the northern flank of the original beachhead, where the Marines had to fight their way up the unprotected volcanic slopes to take Motoyama No. 1. Motoyama No. 2, still in enemy hands, lay just north of that position.

A. P. correspondent Morrie Landsberg reported that thousands more Marines were storming ashore to knock out the cave emplacements of the Japanese within the volcanic enfolds of the island.

Correspondent Art Primm flew over the battle area in a tropical rainstorm and reported that hundreds of American planes, Curtiss Helldivers and Grumman Avengers, and 800 ships of all types, most off the end of the beachhead, with others off the southwest end of the island, were battering the defense positions of the enemy. Still, the Japanese were able to hold out, mounting "stern resistance".

Japanese radio, reporting American carrier Task Force 58 within the Bonin Island waters 650 miles from Tokyo, continued to speculate that the Americans were planning another attack, one on Honshu itself, within the immediate future.

In Manila, American howitzers of the 37th Division tore into the walls of the Intramuros District wherein was holed up the remaining Japanese contingent in the southern area of the city. By noon the preceding day, much of the outer wall had been breached, but still had to be opened wider to permit passage of tanks and troops. Some 7,000 civilian hostages still were believed held behind the walls.

The Eleventh Airborne and First Cavalry Divisions entered Fort William McKinley at the southern outskirts of the capital.

On the Eastern Front, the Russians had forged holes in German lines along a 65-mile front from points 50 to 60 miles southeast of Berlin and Dresden, repulsing German counter-attacks reported the prior day. Marshal Ivan Konev's forces broke through the defensive lines in the areas of Guben, 51 miles southeast of Berlin, Sotau, 28 miles further southeast, and Lauban, 61 miles east of Dresden. Bitter fighting was said to be taking place between the Bober and Niesse Rivers.

On the Western Front, Scottish troops of the Canadian First Army virtually cleared Goch, following 24 hours of house-to-house fighting in the northern sector of the town; but five German counter-attacks secured positions along the Goch-Calcar road, resulting in all night fighting between the forces of General Henri Crerar and the Germans in the Moyland area north of Calcar. Southwest of Goch, Scottish and British troops seized Buchholt and Halvenboom, following a 1,500-yard advance.

The Third Army had pierced Germany at a new location east of Luxembourg City.

The Seventh Army had moved to within 3.5 miles of Saarbrucken.

Some 900 American heavy bombers, escorted by 700 Mustangs and Thunderbolts, struck railyards and locomotive repair shops at Nuernberg, 90 miles north of Munich, in the eighth straight day of substantial raids on the Reich. Moscow intelligence had stated that Nuernberg was now serving as the capital of Germany. Reconnaissance photographs taken four days earlier had showed its railyards 95 percent full, prompting speculation that the rail cars were moving government offices.

The Fifteenth Air Force struck oil refineries southeast of Vienna.

It was reported that President Roosevelt had met alone for something less than four hours with Prime Minister Churchill in Alexandria, Egypt, regarding strategy to defeat Japan. The President had also met with King Farouk of Egypt, Emperor Haile Selassie of Ethiopia, and King Ibn Saud of Saudi Arabia. General Charles De Gaulle was invited to confer with the President in Algiers but begged off, claiming official business prevented his attendance.

The Senate Military Affairs Committee voted to consider a substitute bill for the House-passed work-or-jail legislation. Under the milder amended version, the War Manpower Commission, acting under the authority of the Director of War Mobilization, would be permitted to determine employment ceilings within designated plants or areas of industry and regulate or prohibit the hiring of new workers.

Former British Prime Minister David Lloyd George, 82, recently made an earl, was reported ill with the flu. He would pass away on March 26.

Lewis Clark, head of the CIO meatpackers union, declared that an intention to strike might be posted that night, requisite 30 days in advance of a walkout. At stake was dilatory action by the War Labor Board on a proposed wage adjustment for the meatpackers.

An employee for the Hotel Charlotte had been held up at gunpoint and $933.85 taken from his person. The robber then hopped a bus, began to high-tail it from the city, only to have a change of heart as he reached the outskirts of town, turned around, came back and returned the copped loot, including the 85 coppers. The coppers questioned the copper and found that he was an 18-year old veteran of the Navy, recently discharged, had also been a previous employee of the Hotel Charlotte and so knew their banking route.

Satisfied with the conscientious return of the dough, the Hotel decided not to press charges and the young man was sent on his way, glad of change of course before he wound up in the pokey.

On the editorial page, "The Library" discusses the plans for a new county-wide public library system in Mecklenburg, to be funded primarily by residents of the city, wherein 73 percent of the residential and business real property within the county lay, even if the plan was labeled "fifty-fifty", implying a 50 percent sharing by each of the county and the city. The label, as the piece proceeds to explain, was a misnomer.

Those who reside in the City and County of San Francisco, and other such places where the city and county are, more or less, coterminous, will need to realize that the concept is not universal and that in many places in the country, the city is a distinct entity from the county in terms of its government, even though one is contained within the other. One could analogize to the concept of a donut with the hole being governed differently from the surrounding ring of baked dough, that is, assuming, conceptually, that the city is located roughly in the middle of the county, to afford buffer regions in the event of attack from neighboring counties--in less historically paranoid locales, perhaps not so situated.

We don't mean, incidentally, to slight the City and County of Los Angeles. Since many there, probably, would not readily understand by reference to their own lot, we shall simply refer them to the above analogy based on the City and County of San Francisco.

"Harry's Boys"—not to be confused with Barry's Boys, a different group—discusses the arising of some level of Senate opposition against the appointed new director of the Rural Electrification Administration, Aubrey Williams. The integrity and ability of Mr. Williams were not being challenged, but controversy appeared to have arisen over his direction of the National Youth Administration, now moribund.

"Fingerprinting" reports that state police and sheriffs associations were upset regarding a new law introduced in the Assembly to prevent fingerprinting of persons arrested for misdemeanors. The rationale for the law had not been promulgated, but the piece assumes it had to do with avoiding the prospect of sharing with the FBI fingerprints of citizens charged with minor crimes.

Such knowledge comes in handy, for instance, when reading the testimony before the Warren Commission, taken in 1964, of Lieutenant J. C. Day of the Dallas Police Department, bearing in mind that Exhibit 637 is the infamous palm-print lifted from the latent print found, according to the Lieutenant, on the infamous Mannlicher-Carcano rifle discovered, shortly after the assassination, on the sixth floor of the Texas School Book Depository by Lieutenant Day among some boxes, and that Exhibit 629 is a comparison print taken of Lee Oswald during booking procedure on November 22, 1963. Lieutenant Day testified therein that there was no useable latent print on the rifle, that there was a palm print which he lifted from beneath the wooden stock of the gun, but that he could not match that print to that of the suspect, though he thought he might have been able to do so had he more time, but that there was a sufficient print remaining, he believed, on the rifle, after the lift from the latent, from which the FBI examiner could still obtain, without benefit of the lift, vestiges of a useable and identifiable palm-print.

That knowledge of automobiles continues to come in handy when assessing then, in combination, the testimony of FBI fingerprint examiner Sebastian F. Latona, that, when he first examined the rifle on November 23, he could not find any useable latent prints anywhere on the weapon or on the three expended cartridges, also alleged to have been found by the Dallas Police near the weapon, but that, upon receiving, on November 29, the lift from the latent palm-print, at least ostensibly taken by Lieutenant Day from the rifle in Dallas, Mr. Latona was able positively to match the lift to the comparison palm-print of Mr. Oswald.

We do not mean in any manner, obviously, to make light of this horrible crime, not only against President Kennedy and his family but against the nation, a crime which has adversely impacted the nation, we believe, more than any crime in its history, save perhaps the assassination of President Lincoln. Yet, in order to analyze evidence of any horrible crime with any objectivity, one must set aside those emotions for the nonce. And, in fact, it does help, in one's analysis of that rather tedious evidence of fingerprints, which, when sifted, makes absolutely no sense in terms of implicating Lee Oswald as having handled the rifle in question at all, especially on the day of the assassination, to understand something about automobiles, especially as they existed in 1963, and, in this instance, with particularity, the Little Deuce Coupe, not thereby implicating in any of this mess the Beach Boys, or Ronny & the Daytonas, the latter having come along afterward anyway.

Having said that, we do not either mean to implicate the Warren Commission, or any members of it, in a deliberate cover-up of the truth; nor do we suggest deliberate obfuscation or dissembling by either Lieutenant Day or Mr. Latona. For, in this confusing scenario, with several handlers of the evidence at each stage of the investigation, the right hand obviously could not always know what the left hand was doing, leading to the result of a corrupted investigation without the principals therein involved necessarily individually understanding that result in whole, once the picture is assembled.

But, if you, Mr. or Ms. Phelps, choose to undertake the mission to piece that evidence, just that little bit, the fingerprint evidence, together in such a way that it could truly convince anyone beyond a reasonable doubt and to a moral certainty that Lee Oswald handled that rifle on November 22, 1963, then you certainly are superior to us. Have at it, but bear in mind that you are not allowed to fill in missing gaps in the testimony of these two experts with your own speculation, aside from logical inference, to reach a conclusion on this part of the puzzle. Moreover, simply to say, in conclusion, that Mr. Latona matched the comparison palm-print to the lift of the latent palm-print provided him a week after the assassination, but not with the rifle when originally transferred from Dallas to Washington, and thus that testimonial conclusion by an expert is sufficient, misses the point entirely, without in any manner challenging the accuracy of the result of Mr. Latona's examination, and obviously implies that you are not concentrating on the totality of the fingerprint evidence as presented. Start again.

As always, should you or any member of your team be caught in the process, you are to disavow the source of your information and the impetus for your inquiry or interest therein. We do not know you.

"National Resource" favors the notion being advanced that there would be government-subsidized education in the sciences, perhaps in liberal arts, following the war. The Army and Navy were paying tuition fees for selected candidates with critical skills. A natural extension of this policy was to pay the way for scientific scholarship, necessary in the world to come.

The excerpt from the Congressional Record finds Representative Marion Bennett of Missouri shocked to hear that dogs and blues singers had received the Purple Heart during the course of the war. The Executive orders which authorized giving of the Purple Heart limited its distribution to those men in service wounded in combat by the enemy.

Chips, the dog of war, had been awarded a Purple Heart in 1943. "We all admire the dog," said Mr. Bennett, "but we fail to find anything in the law of the land or in Executive orders authorizing that a dog be placed on the same level with a human and given the same military decorations."

He concluded that he had known some Missouri mules who were just as deserving as Chips in their military service.

Someone should have probably interrupted Mr. Bennett to correct his misimpression of Ms. Froman. She was not what you would call a blues singer.

The 1952 film, "With a Song in My Heart", was based on Ms. Froman's 1943 mishap for which she had received the Purple Heart.

Drew Pearson reports on the Pan American Conference about to get underway in Mexico City, with the spectres of the Fascist dictator Farrell of Argentina and former Secretary of State Cordell Hull looming large over it, despite neither to be in attendance. Secretary Hull had refused recognition of Argentina by the United States despite efforts in Latin America to consider its recognition. The Latin American countries had been angered by this refusal of Mr. Hull even to permit discussion of the matter.

Marquis Childs, still in Paris, reports of having toured a good portion of France by train and car and observed substantial damage to the country from the war, extending well beyond Normandy, prevailing generally throughout France.

Dorothy Thompson discusses, apart from the diplomatic importance of the Yalta Conference, its military significance. For months, Hitler had been promising the German people that a division within the Allied camp would lead ultimately to favorable terms of surrender, leaving Germany intact. The Yalta Conference had completely exploded that myth.

Harry Golden suggests, in a letter to the editor, the reading of a story by Rosette Hargrove appearing in The News the prior week, relating of the emotional problems visited upon the French by the Nazi occupation of four years, not only affecting the present generation of the war, but also, most especially, those who were children at the time. The Nazis had made them, according to the article from Paris, deliberately feel as hunted, living in fear, deceit, falsehood, and villainy.

It was also pretty much akin to the state of mind sought to be induced by Barry's Boys in young liberals in the United States beginning in the early 1960's—still quite persisting in many quarters, simply an extension of McCarthyism accompanied by a new bogey beat, unable any longer to make the label "Red" stick without being the object of considerable derision, turning then to issue indictments of "moral character", that is to say being too liberal, the adherents to the philosophy of Barry-Boysdom having confused libertinism with liberal, indeed many of Barry's Boys being quite given to libertinism, themselves, especially when it comes to playing fast and loose with the Truth. And, of course, unfortunately, many of Barry's Boys were and are girls, some wearing clown outfits, even if typically being used by Barry's Boys for the purposes Barry's Boys wish politically to produce and reproduce.

You know who you are, B.B's. You are found in Macbeth, for that is the only piece of literature apparently you ever read, or at least the parts, selectively, which most appealed to you.