Messenger-Inquirer from Owensboro, Kentucky • 1

MAKE EVERY PAY DAY BOND DAY THE 0WENSBORQ INQUIRER THE WEATHER Kentucky: Fair, not so cool west portion tonight; Friday, partly cloudy and a little warmer. join vine ray-Koii Savings Plan VOL LX, No. 77. OWENSBORO, THURSDAY APRIL 19, 1945 SIXTEEN PAGES ir Truman Tells Democrats He Will Adhere To FDR Program City Of Leipzig Falls To U. S.

First Army Troops; All Organized Resistance In Ruhr Smashed; American Third Drives On Into Czechoslovakia British Have Reached Lower Elbe By JAMES M. LONG Paris. (IP) Leipzig has fallen to First Army troops and other Americans today have smashed the last organized resistance in the Ruhr. Washington, (JP) President Truman Thursday told a quartet of Democratic lawmakers unofficially called "the big four" that he remains committed to the. general legislative program of his predecessor, Franklin D.

Roosevelt. The White House visitors were Senate Majority Leader Barkley (Ky), House Speaker Rayburn, Senator McKellar (D-Tenn), president pro tempore of the Senate, and House Majority Leader McCormack (Mass). Thus the View President affirmed his support of a Roosevelt agenda which included approval of the Bretton Woods monetary agreements, broadening on the Reciprocal Trade Agreement act, extension of the Selective Service law and above all full American cooperation in a program for international peace. Details of legislation were not discussed, but one of the conferees said he concluded that Mr. Truman hoped for extension of the draft law without amendment.

The Senate takes up that bill Thursday, and there is a powerful bipartisan effort under way to modify it by barring use of 18-year-olds in combat duty unless they have had at least six months military training. Immediately after the White House meeting, the senators hurried back to the Capitol for a general democratic conference summoned by Barkley. The conference is expected to pledge full legislative cooperation with President Truman and an era of good feeling between Capitol hill and the executive office. The conference call underscored the Kentuckian's new responsibility as majority leader in fact as well as name. Ten years' service in the Senate taught the new President the necessity of frank, full discussions between the executive and legislative branches if the administration's program is to be carried out with dis patch and a minimum of ruffled feelings.

Unable to confer personally with every one of the 96 men collectively, perhaps, the greatest assemblage of individualists in the nation Mr. Truman has adopted the system of working through Barkley, elected leader of the Democrats and respected colleague of the Republicans. Speaker Rayburn (Texas) and Majority Leader McCormack (Mass) are expected to perform similar functions in the House. All three have received unofficial assurances that no major legislation will be tossed to them "cold," without a full opportunity to discuss it in advance. Where practicable, Mr.

Truman is expected to yield to their appraisal of Capitol hill sentiment he knows well the legislative truism that all major laws are bred of compromise. As vice president. Mr. Truman undertook to act as liaison man between President Roosevelt and the Senate. In some respects, he found himself plodding a one-way street, for Mr.

Roosevelt, absorbed in winning the war and planning permanent peace, found little time to meet with his congressional lieutenants. It is undeniable, too, that the relationship between Barkley and Mr. Roosevelt cooled perceptibly after the Kentuckian's impulsive resignation as majority leader following the President's hard-bitten veto of a tax bill in February, 1944. Mr. Roosevelt called the legislation, which he believed would raise less revenue than was needed, "a tax relief bill providing relief not for the needy but for the greedy." Barkley heatedly told the Senate that statement was "a calculated and deliberate assault upon the legislative integrity of every member of Congress." Peacemakers rushed in to plaster up the break; Barkley was reelected leader unanimously the next day; but things were never the same again.

fit- MkJmmM, ERNIE PYLE IS KILLED Ernie Pyle, 44-year-old Scripps-Howard war correspondent whose death on le, a little island near Okinawa, was revealed by President Truman's message of condolences, is shown as he paused for a moment during a jeep-tour of the Okinawa beachhead. Pyle, whose reporting of the doings of the foot-soldier endeared him to the men of the armed forces, chats with his "chauffeur," Marine Pfc. J. P. Murray, Winthrop, Mass.

(NEA Telephoto from U. S. Navy.) U. S. Cabinet Changes Now Seen Likely In Matter Of Days Message To Owensboro Salary, Wage Earners Reds Within 18 Miles Of Berlin 2,500,000 Soviet Troops Moving On German Capital By RICHARD KASISCHKE London, (P The Russians have Captured Seelow and Wriezen and advanced to within 18 miles of the limits of Berlin, a Transocean broadcast announced today.

Reporting a series of deep penetrations in the four-day old Russian offensive by 2,500,000 Soviet soldiers, Berlin radio announcements said Forst, a Neisse river stronghold 65 miles southeast of Berlin, also had fallen. Transocean's correspondent, Karl Bluecher, broadcast that "the battle for Berlin in the east is approaching its climax." He said the Russians were 'but four kilometers northeast of Muen-cheberg. or about 18 miles due east of Berlin's city limits, and were cast of Buckow, also 18 miles east of Berlin. Wriezen, 23 miles northeast of Berlin, had been captured, he said, along with Seelow, 25 miles due east. "Deep but narrow" penetrations had been made from the Russian bridgeheads along the Neisse, he said, so that the Russians were now due south of Cottbus, Spree river stronghold 55 miles southeast of Berlin.

Other spearheads were due south of Spremberg, 13 miles south of Cottbus and 69 miles southeast of Berlin, and east of Bautzen, 24 miles east of Dresden and but 40 3iles from American positions north Chemnitz. Russian advances to Bautzen would represent a gain of 24 miles from the Neisse above Goerlitz, and advances to Spremberg would be a gain of 16 miles from Forst on the Neisse. 44 Miles From V. S. First The situation on the Neisse front was complicated by a confused German broadcast saying that Marshal Ivan S.

Konev's First Ukraine Army had succeeded in a break-through and implying that this force might be within forty-four miles of the American First Army fighting at Wurzen in the Leipzig area. The Nazi announcer Walter Ester-mann of the Transocean agency said: "The Germans are still keeping check on enemy ground gains accruing to him after a successful breaching of the fortified main battle areas. The enemy is meeting with a violent response from our troops in this (Neisse) area. "This success would remain even if Konev's fast tank spearheads should break through the fortified clearing of the wood of Finsterwalde, (50 miles) south of Berlin within the next few hours and threaten Berlin from the south by bringing the frontal defenses on the Oder to "But there Is nothing to confirm as yet the real menace this attempt would present. As long as the German tank attacks can bind Konev on the new north-south line the Cottbus-Spremberg line a great swing to the northwest is etill a paper proposition." The towns of Cottbus and Spremberg are thirteen miles apart on a line eighteen miles west of the Neisse.

This position would be twen-tv-seven miles west of the town of Finsterwalde and seventy-three miles east of the Americans at Wurzen. Moscow maintained official silence concerning those fronts, but Russian newspaper dispatches from that zone said Soviet troops could see fires in Berlin. One dispatch reported a sharp tank battle to keep reinforcements flowing into a bridgehead across a "swift-flowing, deep river. Either the Neisse or the Oder east of Berlin would fit mat description. The Germans said a Soviet force perhaps Marshal Konstantin Rok-ossovsky's Second White Russian Army which cleaned up the Danzig pocket had crossed the Lower Oder below the great Baltic port of Stettin on a 17-mile front between Schwedt, forty miles north of Berlin, and Greifenhagen, twelve miles south of Stettin.

The Nazis also reported that a bonds opposite your income bracket or, second, by using the payroll allotment plan in which case you should authorize your employer to deduct an amount from your wages each week sufficient to bring the aggregate deductions to the total asked of you by July 7, the final accounting date for bond purchases during the Seventh Loan. If you elect to subscribe your quota by the second method your weekly deductions for the eleven-week period beginning April 22 and ending July 7 will be as Average This editorial message is addressed to the salary and wage earners of Owensboro and Daviess county in business and industry. It concerns the Seventh War Loan drive in which the biggest assignment you have received in this war has been given you. It is an assignment that will call for sacrifices-unaccustomed sacrifices. You are asked to buy War bonds in greater volume than most of you have ever bought them.

If you discharge this task, you and your families will be compelled to forego for the next few weeks many small luxuries that you have come to regard almost as necessities. But we are confident that you will do this once you realize tho acute need. You have never failed in any task your government has set for you in this war. We believe the Seventh War Loan drive, which comes at the time when our lads in the armed forces are putting forth one last determined and even superhuman effort to crush our foes, will not witness your first failure. Your government has given each of you a quota during the Seventh War Loan, based upon your monthly earnings.

These quotas are as follows: Per Month Under $100 follows Wage Average Weekly Deductions 1.71 3.41 6.82 8.53 10.23 11.94 13.G4 $250 People with larger receipts By JACK BELL Washington, Some members of the Roosevelt cabinet are on the way out, and soon. Although the feeling has been general here that President Truman might delay any changes for a couple of months, close friends suggested Thursday that one or more new department heads may be named within days. Most of them point to the Labor Department, which Secretary Perkins undoubtedly would like to leave as soon as she gracefully can. Most-mentioned as a possible successor is Senator Harley Kilgore (D-W. Va).

Kilgore is satisfactory to the CIO and also has worked with the AFL. Both organizations must be reasonably satisfied with the man chosen because he probably will head a revitalized deDartment containing all I labor agencies. A change also will be made in the agriculture set-up, with Secretary Wickard slated to step out in favor of a new man who may take over the duties of War Food administrator as well. Marvin Jones, who fills the latter $225 Seventh Loan Subscription (Cash Value) 18.75 37.50 75.00 93.75 112.50 131.25 150.00 Average Wage Per Month Under $100 180 People with larger should exceed these amounts, maintaining an increasing ratio of bonds to incomes. Average weekly deductions include whatever amount you are now alloting for the regular purchase of bonds through the payroll allotment plan.

You are not asked to add the amount appearing in the above table to your weekly deduction for the purchase of bonds, but to supplement whatever you are alloting at present to bring the total deduction up to the recommended figure. It is suggested that those who are unable to subscribe individual quotas in cash, or prefer not not later than Monday on their allotments, since each week that an increased weekly deduction for On Editorial Page) Ernie Pyle To Be Buried On le Island By GRANT MacDONALD Ie Island, Ryukyus, (JP) Ernie Pyle will be buried with simple military honors here Thursday alongside G. I. Joes, his friends and comrades in life and death. Army Chaplain N.

B. Saucier of Coffeyville, who went with litter bearers under Japanese fire to recover the body of the famed author and war correspondent, will officiate at the ceremony. It will be at 11 a. m. (10 p.

m. April 19, U. S. Eastern War Time). The little guy, beloved by every G.I.

Joe, fell in action Tuesday mid-morning on Ie a little island nobody ever heard of before Pearl Harbor. Of the hundreds of 10th Army troops to land on Ie, 15 were killed during the first three days. Ernie was the 16th American to die there. He wore his helmet because as he told a friend "I try not to take any foolish chances but there's just no way to play it completely safe and still do your job." Before going up front to get the feel of one more frontline action to write to the folks back home, he signed some short-snorter bills for two privates Louis J. Vespole of Corona, Long Island, N.

and "Patsy" J. Rubbino of White Plains, N. Y. Then he got into the jeep with Lt. Col.

Joseph B. Coolidge, of Helena, Ark. "We were riding along," said Coolidge, "when we were fired on by a Jap machinegun. We dove into a ditch. A little later, Pyle and I raised up to look around.

Another burst hit. I looked at Ernie and he was dead. A bullet had entered his left remple just under his helmet." One of the last things Ernie said about the front was: "Life up there is very simple, very uncomplicated, devoid of all the jealousy and meanness that float around a headquarters city." Pyle recently told friends on Guam, Marianas islands that he had a premonition something might happen to him in the operation, but despite their suggestion he remain there, the little columnist continued with the invading force. I got the first report of his death from a G.I. on the Ie Shima beach who said, "is it true Ernie Pyle was killed?" I hurried to an approaching general and before I could ask the question he said, "Yes, it's true." It was impossible, however, to relay the news immediately, since naval headquarters forbade any mention of it until it had been cleared officially.

State General Assembly To Meet Monday Frankfort. Ky. UP) The General Assembly will meet here next Monday at 7 p. C. W.

to supplement public assistance funds and consider two other legislative matters, Gov. Simeon Willis announced Wednesday. Agreement to include in the call measures to enable juvenile World War II veterans to borrow money and to authorize Kenton county to issue bonds to erect an administration building at its Greater Cincinnati airport was announced by the chief executive. In an hour and a half conference with Senate and House leaders, Willis advised them $331,956.82 was needed to keep at present levels for the current fiscal year the old age, needy blind and indigent children aid programs. Appropriations made by the 1944 session for the 1945-46 fiscal year become available next July 1 and are regarded as sufficient to last more than long enough for the 1946 regular session, opening next Janu ary, to grant any additional money needed then.

The Governor announced his formal call for the extraordinary session would include only the three legislative matters he agreed on. He expressed hope they would be acted upon expeditiously. "Everybody agreed to that," Democratic House Floor Leader James E. Quill of Ft. Mitchell, commented afterwards.

"But nobody was able to say just what 'expeditiously' would mean in that case." The state constitution limits legislation at special sessions to subjects named in the Governor's call, and puts a 60-day limit on the length of the session. House Speaker Harry Lee Water-field, Clinton Democrat, pointed out the legislators have power to determine whether the sum named by the Governor would be sufficient. He added there might be any number of bills for the appropriation introduced after the chief executive's message is heard Monday night. Democrats In Majority Democrats have majorities in both legislative branches, and while they will be unable to pass any bills not specified by the Governor, it was pointed out various resolutions affecting Willis' Republican administration might be introduced and the majority might seek to make inves- (Continucd on Page Two) V. S.

TO MAKE STATEMENT Washington, (iP) A State Department announcement clarifving this country's attitude toward Italy before the United Nations conference meets in San Francisco appeared likely Thursday. Congressional sources heard such a statement will be made, but they expect it to stop short of the full-ally status demanded in some Heavy Demand Among Bond Buyers For Tickets To Circus should exceed these amounts, maintaining an increasing ratio of bonds to incomes. Your individual quota may be subscribed In one of two ways, first by cash purchase of the amount of culminating perhaps the greatest single victory of the war. The Third Army was driving down into Czechoslovakia within eunshot of Asch. after bisecting Germany geograpnicaily, cutting routes into the Nazis' hideaway in the Bavarian Alps.

Britons on the north flank closed within six miles and sight of the greatest continental port of Hamburg. They reached the lower Elbe river on a 20 mile front. Just to the south, a thousand Germans with twenty tanks struck out from the British sector and drove three to 15 miles into the rear area of the Ninth Army west of captured Stendal. They were engulfed by cavalry forces. The foray was isolated and the Germans appeared to be trying to slip tHrough the Ninth Army's Ruhr area into the besieged Harz mountain pocket, southwest of the Ninth Army's five-mile deep bridgehead pointed within 52 miles of Berlin.

Seventh Army divisions were fighting hard for Nuernberg, Bavarian citadel of Nazi festivals. Dessau and Halle were falling. There were no reports later than those a day old which placed the Third Army two miles inside Czechoslovakia within eight of Asch. In the great array of captured cities were Duesseldorf, largest in the Ruhr, Solingen, Remescheid, Fuerth, Zwickau, Luneburg, Ansbach and Uelzen. The British captured Uelzen only after six days of savage battle.

Bremen was besieged and Britons fought in its suburbs against Nazis reported rallied two days ago by Heinrich Himmler. The British surge toward Hamburg and to the Elbe carried within 35 miles of Luebeck on the southeast side of the Danish peninsula and 57 of the leading German naval base of Kiel. Harburg was brought within light artillery range. 14th Division Drives Forward In the south, the 14th Armored Division crashed 12 miles southeast of Nuernberg to within five of Neumarkt, 78 miles north of Munich and 132 from Hitler's Bavarian citadel of Berchtesgaden. Supreme headquarters corrected an earlier statement that the Americans had fought to the center of Nuernberg, saying late in the day that actually the Third and 45th Divisions had linked up outside the city.

Oft to the southwest of Nuernberg, the Hellcat (12th Armored) Division reached the FrankischeRezat river in a 17-mile dash to within 60 of Augsburg, Bavarian city of 185,000. Other Americans fought hand-picked SS troops through the streets of the Bavarian Nazi center of Nuernberg, now virtually surrounded. The British reached the Lower Elbe, last river before Berlin, and advanced to within 16 miles of Hamburg in a mighty effort to cut the North sea ports from Berlin, be- leaguered by Russian troops reported 17 miles east and Americans 45 miles west. The siege of Bremen was intensified. "All organized resistance in the Ruhr pocket has ceased and Allied forces have virtually completed rrtopping up the last enemy stragglers," supreme headquarters announced.

This meant that the great cities of Duesseldorf Solingen Remscheid (103.437 and Barmen (165,100) were in First and Ninth Army hands along with the great Ruhr factories which produced 75 per cent of Hitler's war materiel as late as 1942. Gen. Omar Bradley said 316,930 Germans were taken from the Ruhr pocket and that more remained to be counted. This compared with 330,000 Germans captured and killed at StalUigrad, the greatest previous German disaster. The Allies have not yet estimated the number of Germans slain and wounded in the Ruhr.

The pocket was wiped out Wednesday, Bradley said. One phase of the German campaign is finished and "it is necessary to pause temporarily before we go into the next," the Missouri general said. "Let the Germans guess as to what the next is going to be." His, 1st, 3rd, 9th and 15th armies have captured 842.864 prisoners since crossing the Rhine less than a month ago. 20,000 Nazis Captured The last strongholds in Leipzig, including its city hall, were cracked Thursday morning and infantrymen were ferreting out the last snipers. More than 20.000 prisoners and a thousand 88-millimeter guns have been captured in or near the city.

The final German stands were made near a statue of Napoleon in the southeast part of the city, at the railroad station and in the city hall. The final hours of battle were illuminated by a violent electrical storm, blending like a Wagnerian scene with the flashes of gunfire. Leipzig and its ruins swarmed with a war-swollen population of a million Germans. It fell at 7 p. m.

Wednesday night. It was the fifth city of Germany. Duesseldorf was the tenth largest. Infantry of the Fighting 69th and the Indian Head (2nd) divisions met in the center of Leipzig and then wheeled guns up to blast the city hall where the Nazi commander had holed up after refusing to surrender. German refugees tumbled from cellars and shelters and some cheered the Americans advancing into the center of the city from the west, south and east.

It was estimated that three fourths of Leipzig, whose real population was 701.606, was in ruins. The real resistance had been brok- (Continued on Page Eleven) Yanks Reach Northern Tip Of Okinawa; Casualties Reported post, told friends recently he would like to go back to the court of claims, from which he was borrowed by President Roosevelt. Jones still draws pay as a judge, receives no salary as food administrator. J. B.

Hutson, deputy in charge of agricultural reconversion in the war mobilization office, might be Mr. Truman's choice for the enlarged agriculture portfolio. Hutson is a close friend of James F. Byrnes, the former war mobilizer whose sage advice is likely to continue to be welcomed by the President. Byrnes went back to his Spartanburg.

S. C. home for a rest Wednesday, and it is understood he won't come back to Washington for any unofficial advisory position. When he reappears in government service, it probably will be as secretary of state, succeeding Edward R. Stettinius, Jr.

By that time the San Francisco United Nations conference will be over with the way possibly clear for Stettinius to become the American representative in the proposed security organization. and more. Friday, tickets will be issued to those persons who purchase bonds in denominations of $50 or more. On Saturday, if there are any tickets left, they will be distributed among purchasers of $25 bonds. However, it was explained that when the original block of 384 tickets had been disposed of, no more will be available to bond buyers, since Cole Brothers will be unable to provide additional free admissions to bond buyers.

The only cost to the bond buyer will be a federal tax of 34 cents which must be collected on each admission. The free circus tickets were made available by Mr. Terrell in an effort to stimulate sale of War bonds. Goebbels Calls On People To Fight London, (IP) Propaganda Minister Paul Joseph Goebbels told the German people Thursday the nation was "balancing on the razor's edge" and called upon them to stand behind Hitler and "by a last all-out effort make sure that the Reich does not break apart." Although Goebbels was scheduled to broadcast his address Thursday night on the eve of Hitler's 56th birthday, the text was distributed in advance by the official DNB news agency in a special radio transcription to German newspapers, and hence became available here before it reached the ears of its intended audience. For the most part the speech was devoted to resounding praise of the fuehrer, indicating that he remains at least the nominal chief of the crumbling Nazi structure despite rumors of Heinrich Himmler's ascendancy.

Celler Urges Quick Trials For War Criminals Washington. (P) Rep. Celler (D-NY) called Thursday for an immediate start on war crime trials with recently-captured Franz von Paptn as the first defendant. Celler, member of the House judiciary committee, told a reporter that von Papen "as a Nazi jackal thug who helped engineer two wars" should receive a prompt "drum head court martial trial and punishment. Similarly, he added, trials should be arranged without delay for Alfred Kmpp, leading German industrialist; Manfred Zapp, Nazi propagandist; Prince August Wilhelm of Prussia, the Kaiser's son, and Field Marshal von Mackensen, other captured German leaders.

receipts exceeds the estimated 1.500 planes produced monthly by Nippon's factories. Blows struck by Vice Adm. Marc A. Mitscher's fast U. S.

carrier task force accounted for 1,600 of the enemy planes in the 2,280 destroyed from March 18, start of the Okinawa Invasion operation, to April 17, said Fleet Adm. Chester W. Nimitz. The remaining number included 600 knocked down in Japanese strikes at the American ground in- stallations on Okinawa and offshore 'naval forces, and eighty more destroyed by the British Pacific task force. The total does not take into account an undoubtedly large figure of enemy planes destroyed in Superfortress strikes which, have blasted Japanese airfields and assembly and aircraft plants in the Nipponese homeland.

Last available information on Japanese plane production put the figure at 1,500 a month, but this was compiled before outlying Japanese islands afforded bases for frequent Superfortress raids on the enemy homeland. Army Mustang fighters from Iwo Jima, Superforts from Marianas bases and carrier planes of Mitscher's force shared daily strikes at Japan from Saturday through Wednesday five days. While Tokyo was showered with incendiary bombs in two of the attacks, Saturday and Monday, the other raids were centered on major airfields on Kyushu, southernmost of Japan's home islands, only 325 miles north of Okinawa. The later raids met little or no aerial opposition and the bomb-pocked airstrips were empty of planes, indicating lack of sufficient enemy air strength to meet the attacks, or withdrawal of aircraft strength already badly drained by American assaults. Nimitz said Wednesday Ie Jima, 10-square mile island three miles off Okinawa's west coast, was two-thirds under control of 24th Army Corps troops who invaded the island Monday.

The Yanks, having taken the four-strip airfield on Ic. cornered the Japanese garrison of an estimated 1.000 men on heights rising from the southeast shore. Ground fighting on Southern Okinawa continued to lag while American artillery pounded the four-mile deep Japanese line north of Nana, the island's capital city. their to do so, start augmented payroll passes will require (Continued A heavy demand for free circus tickets, which are being given bond buyers, was reported Thursday at the office of the Chamber of commerce in Hotel Owens boro. Only 72 of the original block of 192 tickets to the night performance remained and a considerable number for the afternoon performance had been given out.

The tickets were donated to the Daviess County War Finance committee by Zack Terrell, owner of Cole circus. The circus tickets are being given free the remainder of this week to those purchasers of bonds who will bring their purchase receipt given them by the issuing agency, to the Chamber of Commerce office in Hotel Owens boro. Purchasers of $1,000 bonds were given their choice of seats Wednesday when distribution of free circus tickets among bond buyers was started. On Thursday choice tickets went to purchasers of bonds of $100 Nazis Warned By Churchill By JAMES F. KING London, (JP) Prime Minister Winston Churchill announced Thursday that a "solemn warning" to the Germans against prison camp atrocities was being prepared to be issued over the signatures of himself, Marshal Stalin and President Truman.

The foreign secretaries in Washington Vyacheslav Molotov for Secretary Stettinius for the United States and Anthony Eden for Britain are preparing the warning to "bring home responsibility, not only to the men at the top who are already on other grounds war criminals in many cases, but also to the actual people who have done this foul work with their own hands," Churchill told Commons. Sidestepping attempts to draw from him a hint as to when a proclamation on V-E day will come he declared it would be made jointly with the Russians the Prime Minister made clear that the matter of atrocities is now taking top priority in big three discussions. The whole matter had become "one of urgency," he said and the solemn warning will be issued by the big three in a few days. He disclosed that he had received only Thursday morning a letter from Gen Eisenhower saying "new discoveries, particularly at Weimar, far surpassed anything previously disclosed." The Buchcnwald camp was at Weimar. A parliamentary delegation will leave Friday, on invitation of Gen.

Eisenhower, to get first hand proof of the atrocities disclosed in captured camps, he announced. U. S. Firm On Polish Affair Washington, (IP) The State Department stood firm Thursday against Russia's demand that the Polish provisional government in Wa'rsaw be invited to San Francisco. The Moscow request had been repeated in a diplomatic note to Secretary of State Stettinius Wednesday.

It was flatly rejected in a State Department statement which said that only a reorganized Polish government, "formed in accordance with the Crimea agreement," should be admitted to the United Nations conference. The statement said "Poland is a member of the United Nations and of right should be at San Francisco." However, the U. S. is standing pat on the Yalta agreement and it is expected that Britain will quickly express a similar view. President Harry Truman may take a direct hand in an ef fort to settle the dispute over a new Polish government before the San Francisco United Nations conference opens.

This development appeared in the making today as it became known that attempts by a three-nation commission have failed and the matter has been checked to a meeting of big three foreign ministers here this week-end. The question of forming a provisional government broadly representative of all factions of Poles will be No. 1 on the agenda when Secretary of State Stettinius, British Foreign Secretary Eden and Soviet Foreign Commissar Molotov meet Friday or Saturday. They are expected to receive direct reports from W. Averell Harri-man, American ambassador to Moscow, and Sir Archibald Clark-Kerr, British envoy there.

Harriman and Clark-Kerr arrived by plane Wednesday night. Molotov is en route. The American and British ambassadors had been seeking in Moscow to carrv out with Molotov the big 1 throe agreement at Yalta to weld a i new regime that could start off with representation at tne San rrancisco meetu to form an international peace-keeping organization. PRINCESS DIES IN NAZI CAMP Paris, (JPt Princess Mafalda ot Hesse, eldest daughter of King Vit-itorio of Italv, died Aug. 26 in the German Buchenwald internment camp from, bomb wounds suff-! ered in an air raid, liberated in-: tcrnees arriving in Paris said By The Associated Press American ground forces reached the northern tip of Okinawa island placing them exactly 325 miles from Japan and swept up 35 miles of the Mindanao coastline in a second invasion of that major Philippine island, American commanders announced Thursday.

American casualties in the month long land and sea operations centering around Okinawa mounted to 7,988, including 1,482 dead, 1,756 missing and 4,750 wounded. Naval personnel suffered the most. Japanese killed in land operations alone on Okinawa and a dozen lesser islands invaded were 9,108 as of last Saturday. U. S.

Navy losses were 4,700. The break down showed 989 Navy men killed, 1,491 missing and 2,200 wounded. Presumably most of these casualties were suffered on four destroyers sunk and an unannounced number damaged the only ship losses recorded by the American command in the Ryukyu islands operation. Tokyo radio claimed the U. S.

war fleet in the Ryukyu area has been "destroyed" with a total of 393 vessels sunk. Twenty-fourth Corps Doughboys made substantial gains on little Ie island, just off Okinawa's west coast, Wednesday, third day of the invasion. The enemy still was offering stiff resistance from dug-in positions and from concrete pillboxes. The four-strip airdrome was captured the first day of the invasion. On Ie island, preliminary reports showed 388 Japanese killed and one taken prisoner.

The Americans lost fifteen killed and seventy-three wounded, with five listed as missing. It was on Ie that columnist Ernie Pyle was killed by a Japanese machine gunner Wednesday morning. The casualty figures compared with American Marine casualties of 4,189 dead, 15,308 wounded and 441 missing a total of 19,938 for the conquest of Iwo Jima. That was the bloodiest of the Pacific war. Saipan cost the Americans 3.100 killed, 13,099 wounded and 326 missing, 16,525 in all.

U. S. patrols on Saipan, Tinian and Guam in the Marianas killed thirty Japanese and took eighty-eight prisoners during the week ended last Saturday, Nimitz reported. The toll of Japanese aircraft smashed by Allied guns and bombs in the Ryukyus and Japan in thirty-one days more than 2,280 far terrific tank Battle was raging oe-tween Cottbus, forty-nine miles southeast of Berlin, and Goerlitz, near the Saxon border where the third major Russian offensive apparently was driving for a linkup with the Americans at Wurzen, ninety miles due west in the Leipzig The Central front, roughly a sixty mile arc from Eberswalde, eighteen miles northeast of Berlin, to Muell-rose, 29 miles southeast of the capital, was described by the Germans as writhing with battle as the Soviets drove through massive defenses of dragon's-teeth, interlocking concrete pillboxes and gun-emplacements. The main effort was reported to be a frontal assault from Seelow heights on the Kuestrin-Muencheberg road, but other claws ripped southwest from Wriezen, twenty-four miles from Berlin, and another tore up from the Frankfurt area.

German propagandists 'exhorted Berliners to brace themselves for a struggle inside the city and the Nazi Transocean agency in a night broadcast intimated it expected the Russians to be at Berlin's city limits by Friday, saying "Thursday and the day after one of the bloodiest battles of this war will develop before the gates of Berlin." Transocean Commentator Gerhard Emskoetter, asserting the main drive was toward Muencheberg, a community just sixteen from Berlin, said 2,500,000 Russians were in the attack, adding that "their 2,500 artillery guns and 1.600 mortars fired more than a half million salvos in the past twenty-four hours." Nazi Commentator Ernest von Hammer said the "battle has reached its climax" with "nine Russian armies now attacking in a general offensive on the capital and hundreds of tanks rolling over the plowed-up He "local breaches" in the German lines but was vague on place names. A.