Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that Moscow had confirmed that Soviet Armies had penetrated to within four miles of the center of Berlin. Frankfurt on the Oder had been captured, along with the Berlin suburbs of Pankow, Oranienburg, Coepenik, and Friedrichsfelde, the Germans claiming recapture of the railroad station in Coepenik. The First White Russian Army captured Birkenwerder and Henningsdorf, while other forces took Wandlitz and Karlshof. Fighting was ongoing in Beelitz, Trebbin Telton, and Hahlwitz to the south of the city.

The capital was now nearly surrounded, with only an avenue of escape five miles wide to the west via Spandau; the Russians were in control of a fifth to a fourth of Greater Berlin.

A detailed map of Berlin on the page shows the positions of the various suburbs.

Some of the Russian forces to the south were within 15 miles or less of American lines established on the Elbe by the Ninth and First Armies.

The Russians stated that the Luftwaffe had massed a thousand planes for the defense of Berlin but that Soviet pilots had knocked out 411 during the previous four days.

A report from Berlin radio denied rumors that Hitler had fled the capital, affirming to Berliners that the Fuehrer remained and intended to remain in Berlin, together with Herr Doktor Goebbels. The apparent intent of the broadcast was to shore up flagging German morale.

On the Western Front, the Third Army, turning secretly from its eastward drive toward Dresden, moved 28 miles to within 128 miles of Berchtesgaden, crossing the Danube, and reaching a position 50 miles from Munich and 25 from Regensburg. Resistance had stiffened late in the day as the Army encountered SS troops determined to fight to the death. The Army had captured 33,000 prisoners within the previous 24 hours.

The Seventh Army had moved to within 50 miles of Munich and 110 miles of the Brenner Pass, moving across the Danube via an intact bridge.

The Sixth army Group took Stuttgart and Freiburg.

The French moved around the western edge of Lake Constance, western border of the Berchtesgaden redoubt, and advanced to the Swiss border, forming a trap of remaining German forces in the Black Forest.

To the north, the British Second Army opened the final offensive against Bremen, while the First and Ninth Armies awaited a junction with the Russians, expected any day. The First captured Dessau, 52 miles southwest of Berlin, taking 31,000 prisoners.

Only fourteen German cities remained under the control of the Reich.

A battalion of the 83rd Division, commanded by Lt.-Colonel Granville Sharpe of Burlington, N.C., was in readiness at the Elbe to begin movement toward junction with the Red Army, according to Associated Press correspondent Kenneth Dixon. Col. Sharpe had been a star football player at Davidson College, near Charlotte. He had been serving in active combat command since D-Day and had led his troops through the hedgerows of Normandy.

The 800,000th prisoner taken by the First Army wins the door prize for accurate prediction on the end of the war. He stated without hesitation that the war would be over in two weeks. Bingo.

"Who isn't glad?" he added.

We can think of a few perhaps, in Berlin.

In Italy, the Fifth and Eighth Armies, having captured Bologna Saturday, stormed forward 35 miles north and northwest of the city, reaching the Po River. The Eighth besieged Ferrara, 3.5 miles from the Po, 30 miles northeast of Bologna.

The Fifth Army was now 220 miles across the Alps from the French troops on the west shore of Lake Constance and 230 miles from the Seventh Army moving toward Munich. The Brenner Pass into Austria was but 140 miles away.

The Germans were fleeing to the north, perhaps ready to make a stand at the Po. Allied planes destroyed huge numbers of German vehicles at the cost of thirty planes missing.

On Okinawa, Japanese troops, moving under cover of darkness, had recaptured Kakazu on the west side of the island. The town had been captured by the 27th Division of the Tenth Army during the initial phase of the invasion.

In five days of steady effort to break the Japanese defense positions before Naha, no substantial gains had been made by the Americans.

In southern Okinawa, the 24th Army Corps had killed 11,738 Japanese troops since the beginning of operations on April 1, not including the casualties inflicted on Ie Jima or in the nearby Kerama Islands, or those in the northern sector of Okinawa.

In the first enemy air attack in a week on Okinawa, the Americans knocked out 49 Japanese planes.

The Third Amphibious Marines of General Geiger had invaded Taka Islet at the entrance to Kimmu Harbor, and Sesoko Islet, a mile off Motobu Peninsula, both on the west coast of Okinawa. Taka was quickly taken, along with half of Sesoko.

On the editorial page, "Jack-Up on Wages" reports that the primary Washington agencies overseeing wages and prices during the war, OPA, WLB, and the Office of Economic Stabilization, each believed that wage increases were necessary in the textile industry to increase production and that such could occur without resulting increase in prices. The industry, however, disagreed.

"Nut Grass" comments on the noxious Scleria in the garden, that it was a subversive element, attacking lawns and flower beds, once rooted, hard to remove. Some efforts to exterminate it at its roots had resulted in rulings that the exterminators were engaged in interstate commerce and thus subject to Federal regulation.

The piece appears not to jest in this latter regard, citing U.S. v. Hank Smilberg, resultant, it contends, of an Iowa gardener following his two-year old nut grass root system, winding up in Arkansas with his tunnels to get at it. That he had supported himself with the tubers was deemed irrelevant, and he was hanged in 1927.

It had been known to sprout through concrete and turned weed-killer to fertilizer through some unknown photosynthetic process.

The only cure known to man against the pandemic menace, concludes the piece, was that which the earlier generation had used to kill off Johnson grass: "die and leave it."

Actually, in searching for U.S. v. Smilberg, we find no such case. Apparently, the editors were either having a go with readers or some legal scoliaster in Charlotte was having a go with the editors.

Either way, maybe it has something to do with the Flit.

"A Good Record" comments on a seven-term city councilman in Charlotte, first elected in 1931 as labor's councilman. He was a taciturn member, voting yea and nay and never saying much else. He had never been beholding to special interests, however, and voted his conscience on issues. He had planned to run again until the merger between the Citizens' group and the People's group on the Council caused him to decide to withdraw.

"Pacific Bases" advocates the retention, as favored by Admiral Nimitz, of Pacific islands for which American blood had been paid, as a hedge against future warfare waged by Japan.

The excerpt from the Congressional Record finds Senator Henrik Shipstead of Minnesota addressing to Senator Robert Taft of Ohio the issue of American securities held by Great Britain, the largest international holder thereof. The British Government took over all securities held by British nationals on the day war was declared, September 2, 1939. The British Government had made money from these securities since that time and the Senator suggested that Britain should therefore not be allowed to retain this income plus the benefits of Lend-Lease.

Drew Pearson comments that Foreign Minister Anthony Eden of Great Britain had, at a closed-door luncheon, made a good impression on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and the eight members of the U. S. delegation bound for San Francisco, providing a sound pitch for support of the United Nations organization. The only perceived slight was that he had not mentioned President Roosevelt. Many had expected a brief tribute.

Samuel Grafton reports on a delegation of eight Republican Senators, led by Senator Robert Taft of Ohio, who had met with President Truman and pledged their support. He then proceeds to seek to define what might have been meant by "support", speculates that President Truman's quick assertion of assent to the Bretton Woods agreement at his first press conference the previous week had perhaps been planned to let the Congress know that for which he stood so that later they could not back off from their pledge of support.

A soldier in France, Corporal Flowers, writes home to ask that The News perhaps print some of the good things about North Carolina to go along with the bad things it had listed in the recent editorial titled "For Home Consumption Only". He had tried to sell other soldiers on the benefits to be enjoyed in the state and looked somewhat dissembling in the face of the editorial.

An excerpt from a forthcoming book, The Plot Against the Peace, by Michael Sayers and Albert E. Kahn, appears on the page. It tells of the Paris Peace Conference in 1919 following World War I having called for a public indictment of Wilhelm II and his extradition from Holland, to which he had established exile following the Armistice, that he be tried thence for war crimes. He was never extradited or tried, however, living out his remaining years in Holland and even advising and financing the rearmament of Germany during the thirties.

In 1920, pursuant to another agreement of the Conference, that Germany would cooperate in turning over to the war crimes tribunal all persons accused of war crimes, a list of 896 accused was issued, including Generals Hindenburg, Ludendorff, and Admiral von Tirpitz, among others. None from the list, however, was ever tried.

The Germans objected to the list, said that the peace might be compromised if war crimes trials to be conducted by the Allies were pressed. The Germans agreed to hold their own war crimes trials. The Allies submitted a "test list" of 45 names as prime defendants. Of those, 12 were tried, all, save one general, being underlings; six were convicted, each receiving light sentences. The trials were pervaded by an atmosphere of nationalism as demonstrators gathered daily outside the tribunal and regularly congratulated those acquitted and condemned the Allies each time a conviction was returned.

The most egregious example of the travesty which had been this trial was that of General Karl Stenger who had issued an order on August 26, 1914 to massacre all Allied soldiers taken prisoner, whether wounded or not. Pursuant to the order, large numbers of Allied troops were killed after being taken prisoner. General Stenger was nevertheless acquitted of war crimes by the German commission. His aide, who had passed the order to the front, received a mere two years.

Such was the war crimes tribunal of World War I.

The purpose of the book was as a public warning not to repeat the same mistakes following World War II, thus inviting a third world war down the road.