Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that, as the whole of the German Rhine front was collapsing, the 83rd Infantry Division of the Ninth Army established a position on the Rhine and captured the western end of the Ruhr, taking Krefeld and Neuss, the latter a suburb of Duesseldorf, the former seven miles from Duisburg. Five German divisions had been decimated in the drive, the way for it having been cleared the previous night to within three miles of Neuss by the Second Armored Division before turning north toward the Nord Canal. The Ninth Army was within ten miles of joining with the Canadian First Army in a pinch which could trap thousands of Germans.

The Germans continued to fight the Canadians fiercely until noon this day and then began crossing the Rhine in retreat without explanation, as the Canadians advanced five miles in pursuit.

The First Army continued an artillery bombardment of Cologne, five miles away, as the RAF dropped more bombs on the city. The Army also moved to within fifteen miles of Bonn and within seven miles of Euskirchen.

The Third Army to the south finished the job of taking Trier, entered the day before, thus opening the gate to the Moselle Valley and Coblenz, Mainz, and Frankfurt, the latter against which the Russians were also ready to move.

Along the Meuse, Venlo and Roermond fell with little resistance, closing off the only escape route for the remnants of the German 15th Army within that sector.

The maximum advance of the week-old campaign had been 23 miles, from the Roer to Neuss, the latter 290 miles from Berlin.

The day before, in addition to Muenchen Gladbach, Rheydt had also been captured. Together, the centers had a population of 300,000, swollen by refugees, making the combined cities the largest population center yet captured in Germany by any of the Allies.

About 2,500 heavy bombers struck at Cologne and Dresden, in support, respectively, of the American and Russian Armies. Of these, 750 to a thousand were RAF planes which hit ahead of the First Army in the Cologne sector, while 1,200 American heavy bombers struck a series of targets in southeastern Germany, including Dresden and Chemnitz.

Again, we ask revisionists who question the bombing of Dresden what the Russians were supposed to have done without air support. Leaving them, and, consequently, the entire combined force from East and West, to flounder, enabling the Nazis to regroup, costing untold numbers of additional Allied lives, would not seem to cry out as a viably alternative policy.

For the first time since January 14, the Luftwaffe rose in strength to defend the targets. At least 62 enemy planes were shot down and twenty more destroyed on the ground.

The Fifteenth Air Force out of Italy hit the area of Linz in Austria.

Here's mud in your eye, Hitler.

On the Eastern Front, the Second White Russian Army, utilizing Cossack and Siberian horsemen as vanguards, had reached the Danzig-Stettin Highway between Koeslin and Schlawe in Pomerania, seven miles from the Baltic coast, in a 22-mile advance from Bublitz, essentially cutting off Danzig from Germany. Also isolated was a 150-mile coastal strip of Eastern Pomerania and Northwestern Poland.

Ninety miles southeast, the Russians, according to German reports, broke through the northern lines at Arnswalde after crossing the Ihna River.

On Iwo Jima, tank-led Marines continued to advance, pushing the remaining Japanese defenders to the northern tip of the island. The Japanese in their waning effort nevertheless continued to inflict heavy casualties on the Marines. The Third Division Marines captured Motoyama No. 3, completing the capture of all three of the island's airfields, the latter having been under construction at the time of invasion on February 19.

The tank-led Fifth Division advanced forward on the west coast while one spearhead on the plateau of the island had moved forward 800 yards, conducting an assault on Hill 362, not to be confused with Hill 382, captured two days earlier.

General MacArthur returned to Corregidor for the first time since March 12, 1942. Present with him were eleven of the members of his staff who had evacuated with him three years earlier. A brief flag-raising ceremony memorialized the occasion.

In Manila, the Americans had captured the agricultural building from the Japanese but the enemy was still in possession of the finance building.

Invading American forces on Wednesday, as reported by the Japanese, had now secured Palawan, the seventeenth Philippine island to be occupied by the Americans.

A daylight raid of B-29's struck Singapore from India.

On the editorial page, "That's Better" praises the decision to propose a bill to change the method by which the County and City Recorders and the County and City Solicitors were selected for office. The former method was by appointment for all except the County Recorder who had been elected. Now, all four officials would be appointed, the better way to have things, suggests the piece, to avoid too much politics entering into the selection process.

"Patchwork" finds that the South Carolina Legislature was in the process of amending the lax marriage laws of the State which allowed for marriage without a waiting period and without medical examination. The new legislation would provide for a minimum of a day of waiting from issuance of the license.

"$7 Per Second" was the cost of running the Red Cross and suggested the need for contributions. Mecklenburg's goal of $224,000 would operate the Red Cross for only nine hours, but nevertheless stood as important to the overall national campaign for the organization.

"Who's Talking?" finds the president and vice-president of Reynolds Metals Co. complaining to the Senate Small Business Committee that some unnamed Government agencies were discriminating against small business in favor of large corporations, stifling free enterprise in so doing. It was the precise message of Henry Wallace and ran contrary to the defenders of Jesse Jones and his practices while Secretary of Commerce, in that it showed the practices of the Department while he had headed it to be thusly killing of private enterprise by encouraging monopolistic practices.

"Compliment" lauds the work of the Charlotte Chamber of Commerce, not only in disseminating the value and advantages of the city to outsiders but also to residents.

The excerpt from the Congressional Record finds Senator Harlan Bushfield of South Dakota, of whom Drew Pearson also makes reference in less than complimentary terms, giving a speech during the debate which had led to the confirmation of Colonel Elliott Roosevelt to become Brigadier General. In it, he had said that a subcommittee of the Military Affairs Committee had found that somebody had requested priority for a bulldog to go on a plane to California.

Senator Bushfield then continued to recite the facts of the episode, that the dog supposedly had bumped three servicemen in Memphis on their way home on furlough.

Senator Tom Stewart of Tennessee interrupted to correct that the dog had not bumped the three men at all, but rather enjoyed passage only because of the priority given generally to cargo over personnel.

Senator Bushfield nevertheless continued to press Senator Stewart to answer whether the men were in fact put off the plane, to which Senator Stewart answered affirmatively. Likewise, that the dog was kept on the plane.

Drew Pearson informs of Secretary of Interior Harold Ickes warning of a coal shortage of 50 million tons the following year, as well as a shortage in the current year. The reason was not the fault of the miners, whose average age was now 45, compared to less than thirty prior to the war. The previous year, 30,000 miners had been drafted; another 30,000 would be drafted in 1945.

The fight was being led by Senator Bushfield of South Dakota, whose greatest distinctions had been that he had the year before championed a bill for an Indian woman named Winnie-Left-Her-Behind, and, second, that he had more millionaires outside his constituency contributing to his campaign than any other Senator.

He was attacking Mr. Williams on the basis of scuttlebutt dug up by the Dies Committee in previous years, suggesting Mr. Williams as a dangerous radical.

Other Senators, even fellow Republicans, were not buying into the defamatory charges.

The column, the previous week, had related that the inquiry regarding Mr. Williams's Christianity was being led by Mississippi Senator Theodore Bilbo.

The first "restriction" restricted from June 1, 1944, incidentally, is now here. We recommend for the restriction Brown's Mixture. It will cure anything which limits your perambulation through the virtual world.

Samuel Grafton reports that Western Union had just recovered 19,000 miles of wires and 700 telegraph stations which had been previously used to communicate horse racing results. It was not realized until recently that the wires and stations were laying dormant since the first of the year when the horse racing season was suspended to reduce unnecessary travel and release race horse industry workers into the war industry employment sector.

Marquis Childs, now in Naples, tells of flying aboard the Mediterranean Air Transport Service plane from France to Italy. MATS had flown blood to Anzio during the thick of that battle a year earlier and had done so without fighter escort. Another prior job was to spray areas just captured in North Africa, Sicily, and Italy, to prevent malaria. It had also formerly evacuated the wounded from field hospitals, but that chore had been taken over by Troop Carrier Command.

The editors compiled a report on the draft of the young of the country. Senator Robert Taft of Ohio, among others, had complained that some eighteen-year olds were now being sent into combat with only the minimum seventeen weeks of basic training behind them.

A letter writer properly complains that he could not visit a woman who had written him from Morganton State Hospital stating that her son, serving under General Patton, had been injured. He had written the acting superintendent, Dr. Brown--not to be confused presumably with the Doc Brown of the "Side Glances" of the day, who had already died--to have the "stupid rule" changed, but the Doc had replied that he did not know how it could be done. Dr. Saunders, the regular superintendent, was fortunately recuperating from some unstated malady.

The correspondent concludes that he hopes The News would both publish his letter and forward it to Tom Jimison in desire of effecting recognition of how to make alteration of the stupid rule, as it obviously was, preventing those who could not break away the week's six days to visit on Sundays--presumably because some necessary part of the staff to accommodate visitors were not affordable, or allowed to work in a Christian State, on the Sabbath.

Of course, the question also arises as to how much staff would truly be necessary to restrict visitations between patients and visitors such that they did not loose from their ordinary restraints control of their inhibitions or to deter the incautious and unduly overzealous and empathetic visitor in an attempt to slip a nail file or the like implement to the beseeching patient imploring desire of escape from the monotony of the asylum.

The correspondent, for the nonce, however, might have needed to find sufficient contentment with communication in a song. In any event, we applaud his pluck. The rule was stupid, indeed, may have infringed, in a practical sense, the right of association under the First Amendment.