Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that the First Army had fought through Cologne to reach the Rhine, moving past Dom Cathedral in the city center. Only light resistance remained within the city, and the Third Armored and 104th Infantry Divisions had virtually eliminated all of it. The Eighth Infantry also had moved into the city, also reaching the Ringstrasse. Berlin was now 288 miles distant.

Retreating enemy troops were moving south to Bonn, from which American troops were but six miles.

American troops now were to the Rhine from north of Cologne, with the exception of a bend in the river south of Duesseldorf.

The Third Army, also meeting only light resistance, advanced 25 miles in 30 hours, half the distance to the Rhine, along the Kyll River bridgehead.

The RAF the night before had attacked with 1,100 bombers, dropping 4,000 tons of bombs on Chemnitz, Berlin, Bohlen, Mannheim, and Gelsenkirchen. During the day, another attack hit Salzbergen.

Canadian Press correspondent Ross Munro reported that the Germans were massing their defenses on the east side of the Rhine and pouring artillery shells into the area of Kleve. The defense lines beyond the Rhine were not nearly as well fortified as the Siegfried Line and so the Rhine stood as the last line of major defense for the Germans. It was believed that the Germans could not muster sufficient forces to guard the river adequately all along its 450-mile course.

Prime Minister Churchill had visited the front lines in Germany during the weekend and told the soldiers that soon the Germans would be driven to the east of the Rhine. He personally fired an artillery shell from Goch, directed at Adolf Hitler. He indicated that he was not responsible should it not reach the intended target as he had only pulled the lanyard after the artillery men had loaded and aimed the gun.

On the Eastern Front, the First White Russian Army continued to advance toward Stettin, reported by the Germans to be within 13 miles at Gollnow, reaching the Oder River near Greifenhagen. Grudziadz, 55 miles south of Danzig, had been captured.

In Italy, the Fifth Army had captured Bisopra, thirteen miles from Bologna.

In Rome, civilians marched on the Royal Palace while Prince Umberto was inside. Two bombs were thrown and shots fired. The reason for the demonstration was the escape of Italian General Mario Roatta, accused of war crimes.

On Iwo Jima, there had been no significant change in the lines since the previous day, but reinforcements and supplies were being landed to fuel a final assault on the remaining Japanese tenaciously holding the northern tip of the island. Fully 12,500 Japanese had been counted as killed in the sixteen days of action while 2,050 American Marines had died. More Japanese dead were concealed within caves and pillboxes or had been dragged away by their own troops.

On Luzon, 25th Division troops pushed deeper into the Caraballo Mountains and took more of the Balete Pass Road leading to the Cagayan Valley. The 38th and 43rd Divisions, fighting along the west coast moved through the Zambates Mountains.

General MacArthur announced that six of ten Japanese divisions defending Luzon had been wiped out. It was estimated that some 100,000 Japanese soldiers had died thus far in defense of the island since the American invasion at Lingayen Gulf January 9.

The Ohio River Valley was being flooded to levels reached only twice before, shutting down war plants and transportation facilities. The river was rising at the rate of two feet per hour following a downpour, reaching 13 feet above flood stage, with the prospect of the river rising another five feet. The record was ten feet higher, reached in 1937. Some areas of Cincinnati were threatened.

On the editorial page, "Cash or Credit?" admits that there had been no immediate declaration of acceptance of the editorial position adopted the previous week in the column, that Charlotte proceed on a pay-as-you-go basis, with a consequent temporary higher tax rate, rather than issuing long-term bonds. The piece admits that it would be difficult of accomplishment, necessitating high taxes to finance new projects while still maintaining the tax structure necessary to pay off the old debt service. Yet, for the sake of avoidance of the prospect of mortgaging the future to enable desirable public projects, beneficial to the growth of the community, such a policy would be the more advantageous.

"AWOL, Up Front" finds sad the story out of Los Angeles of an Army major who, having fought bravely at the front and been assigned to desk duty, became restless and went AWOL, not to go home, but to join the soldiers again at the front, had nevertheless been court-martialed, docked $300 in pay, all for the sin of wanting to fight the declared enemy.

"Oh, No John" reports that the CIO had called upon the President to seize the coal mines to avert a strike by the UMW of John L. Lewis. It was a departure for labor, which prior to this point, had appeared to tolerate in neutral stance at least, the antics of Mr. Lewis and the miners during wartime, no matter the selfish motives, placing the personal welfare of the miners ahead of the country's war effort. Now, Mr. Lewis's stance, which had eschewed any effort to engage in compromise prior to the contract deadline on April 1, had made it clear that the UMW would seek to coerce the President to accept the UMW's demands for higher wages. In the process, however, he had thoroughly eroded the support of a substantial part of labor.

"Mr. Hoey's Test" suggests that North Carolina's Senator Clyde Hoey had served notice on Southern Democrats that he would not blindly follow every recalcitant stance of the bloc when principle called for a different position, by his vote in committee for confirmation of Aubrey Williams as head of the Rural Electrification Administration. Mr. Williams was the only Southerner, other than Senator Ellender of Louisiana, to vote for the confirmation.

The excerpt from the Congressional Record, finds Tennessee Representative John Jennings exercised about two of his colleagues having been shut out of a hearing held by some bureaucrats anent strawberries.

For their support of the strawberry, he and two fellow Congressmen, James Morrison of Louisiana, the catsup man, and Harold Earthman of Tennessee, had gotten the raspberry from some "small-potato bureaucrats". In response, Congressman Jennings favored cutting off the water of these agencies, terminating their allocation of public funding.

Drew Pearson forecasts that, for the first sixty days of his tenure, newly confirmed Secretary of Commerce Henry Wallace would seek to effect no new changes in the department until he had obtained the proper feel for it, at which point, he would begin to place his own stamp upon it. He had refused to make any deals in advance of confirmation and so would be free to make appointments and trim fat as necessary.

Marquis Childs, writing from Rome again, explains that letters to G.I.'s in Italy expressing to them relief that they were not fighting in France or Germany had angered the recipients. For the Italian front, he avers, was one of the most strenuous and dangerous of the war. Relatively few Germans were able to hold mountainous peaks in northern Italy, making the taking of those positions both arduous and death-defying, requiring direct assault.

Samuel Grafton relates back to the October 5, 1937 Chicago speech of FDR, favoring quarantine of the aggressor nations to avoid further acts of aggression. He had refrained in that speech from naming those nations, but referred implicitly to the acts of aggression by the Japanese in China since mid-summer of that year and bellicose statements, the building of military machines, and some limited test actions by both Germany and Italy.

Mr. Grafton suggests that the Thursday speech by the President on Yalta, running to 4,500 words, had, in effect, stated, "Mission completed." He had defined in the speech that for which America had been engaged in the war. He had accomplished his work well, not handing a blueprint to the Congress, as had President Wilson before him, asking the Congress to build the building. Rather, President Roosevelt, in the Yalta accord and the Dumbarton Oaks agreement before it in October, had built the building and then challenged Congress either to approve it or tear it down, as they deemed fit.

Already, the plan was working. No one could therefore see it as merely a theoretical position which might or might not work. Thus, he had "taken the rattle out of the hands of the childish men". These men could now object to Averill Harriman representing the United States on a three-power commission to determine the structure of the Polish government, or to the four-power commission to be set up to police and occupy Germany, or to the complete and permanent disarmament of Germany to void its capability in the future to wage war. But each time they so objected, they would break something precious before the world and the world would "hear it snap".

Following World War I, there had occurred the Versailles Treaty, then the League of Nations, at which point the cohesion of the Allied powers enjoyed during the war disintegrated. On this occasion, there would be unity among the powers as the United Nations organization was formed. Contrary to the position in the former case, the groundwork had already been laid. Congress now was only left with the task of ratification, not faced with the ominous load of having to effect the sustenance of wartime alliances in peacetime.

This moment in history, offers Mr. Grafton, was that for which the country, for which all of the Allies, had fought the war and endured the horrors attendant with it.

"It was for this moment that a thousand books have been published, and for this moment, a child was split by a bayonet in Poland, and it is all summed up now. All of it is summed up, the intellectual's agony, and the soldiers sleeping in the railroad stations of an empty Sunday, and all the goodbyes.

"Any man who intends to say 'No!' must shut these visions out of his eyes..."

Dorothy Thompson likewise delivers high praise to the achievements of President Roosevelt at Yalta, enabling agreement among the Big Three on the pressing questions of Poland, Yugoslavia, Greece, Italy, and, most important of all, Germany. It was impossible to reach positions wholly satisfactory to each nation on all of these questions, or even any one of them. But the fact that compromises had been struck acceptable to all three was of utmost importance.

A letter writer, president of the Charlotte branch of the National Mail Carriers Association, in response to "In the Money" of February 26, corrects the editorial's misimpression that rural delivery of mail had been curtailed in the country, when, in fact, he says, mail delivery in rural areas was faster and more efficient despite much longer routes than in previous eras. The coming of age of the automobile had so permitted this transition from the horse-and-buggy days.

Another letter writer wished the editors to explain to him and fellow G.I.'s why they should not receive exception to rationing upon return from service when trying to start a busisess with a G.I. loan from the Government. He points out that civilian small business received such exception, apparently from having political connections. He favored exemption from rationing for such critical items as shortening and sugar.

The editors point him to a piece on the back page of The News for explanation. Unfortunately, we don't have the back page and so you will have to find it for yourself, should you have an abiding interest as to whether or not sugar and shortening ration exemption to G.I.'s was favored or not by The News and if not, why.

Perhaps, they merely suggested he get together with the strawberry advocate in Congress and form a shortcake lobby.