—--— % FORECAST - ' —i - REMEMBER WILMINGTON AND VICINITY: Partly • cloudy today, with slightly higher tem- PEARL HARBOR P Temperatures yesterday: ”■ AND BATAAN yi.il,.j |j —_ ----WILMINGTON, N. C., TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 26, 1944 FINAL EDITION ESTABLISHED 1867 I Americans Hunt Nazi Enemy In Their Homeland i.-. tbh" As a camouflaged tank opens up on a hidden N azi position in the town of Roth” Germany, Ameri can infantrymen crouch by a roadside fence and ho id their machine guns ready. The moment the enemy i, flushed out, the guns will begin their deadly cha tter. This is an official Signal Corns nhntn. Reds Roar Through Estonia TROOPS ADVANCE HEARER BOLOGNA ROME, Sept. 25——American Fifth army troops, smashing be yond the core of the enemy’s Goth ic line, were fighting forward to night less than 12 miles from the Bologna-Rimini highway, main es cape route for German forces still battling desperately northwest of the Adriatic port of Rimini. The thurst toward the highway— the Via Aemilia of the Romans— was made northeast of Firenzuola. Farther west Yank troops contin ued to advance in the Futa Pass area and reached points roughly 15 miles from the big industrial city of Bologna. (An Associated Press dispatch from the Swiss-ltalian frontier re ported American forces were with in 12 1-2 miles of Bologna, a city i of 300,000. It said Allied bombings bad disrupted all public services in Bologna, including its water sup p!y, and that bloody fighting was in progress in the streets between Italian partisans and fascists.) In the Adriatic sector Eighth Army troops penetrated 2,000 yards beyond the Rimini-Bologna railway north of Santa Giustina and to within 1,500 yards of the historic Rubicon river, where they were checked temporarily by fierce Nazi resistance. Enemy parachute troops, infan try and armored forces were fight ing desperately to hold a line across the entrance to the wide and fertile Po valley, home of almost half Italy’s population. Eighth Army headquarters emphasized that there yet was no indication of a general German withdrawal in the Adriatic area. -V Churchill Back Home After Trip On Liner LONDON, Sept- 25— UP) —Prime Minister Churchill and Mrs. Churchill have arrived in England from the Quebec conference with President Roosevelt. The journey both to America and back was made on the liner Queen Mary. * 1 Russian Army Speeds On Toward Riga; Germans Fleeing For Lives LONDON, Tuesday, Sept. 26.—UP) —Russian troops on the ninth day of their powerful northern offen sive yesterday had virtually freed all of Estonia, winning the Baltic seaport of Haapsalu and a 35-mile strip of the Gulf of Riga below fal len Parnu as they sped on toward imperilled Riga, Latvian capital and Nazi escape bottleneck. The enemy last night held only a thin belt of western Estonia, about 20 to 25 miles wide and 40 miles deep, as well as a few is lands off the west coast and Mar shal Leonid A. Govorov’s Lenin grad, army was expected to over run that area by today or tomor row. Germany’s fleeing troops had only one evacuation port left to them, Virtsu, and Red army arm ored columns were bearing down swiftly on it. Soviet planes were bombing and strafing the disor ganized enemy, and the Red banner fleet was loose in the Baltic sea for the first time in three years. Red Army columns were within 65 miles of Riga on the north, 56 miles on the northeast, 40 on the east, and last were reported only six miles from the prize citadel on the south. Soviet artillery was pouring shells into the city. Tho Mncmw bulletin announcing the increasing German disaster in Estonia and Latvia, where origin ally 200,000 Germans had attempt ed to hold off the Russians, also told of the capture of 50 localities in southern Poland, including Be rehy Gurne, only three miles from the Czechoslovakian frontier. -V Powerful Red Fleet Moves In Baltic Sea HELSINKI, Finland, Sept. 25—UP) _Heavy gunfire from the Finnish gulf echoed in Helsinki today, in dicating that the Red fleet had moved in strength into the here tofore German - controlled Baltic sea for the first time in more than three years. Russian naval forces were said to be firing at all sea-going craft sighted in an effort to smash Nazi attempts at evacuation and may even have engaged one or two German heavy cruisers which informants said were covering the enemy’s confused withdrawal from the Baltic states. Land Would CutUp Trade Of Germans And Japanese WASHINGTON, Sept. 25—® ~ Vice Admiral Emory S. Land, chief of America’s war time Merchant Marine, swung into the capital’s raging argu ment over German peace Policy today with an assertion that the Allies should carve UP both German and Japanese foreign trade and divide it among themselves. Denial of world commerce to the enemy, states would mean their end as modern in dustrial nations, Land made ciear, and in advocating such a course he apparently rang ed himself alongside Treasury Secretary Morgenthau in fav oring the return of Germany specifically to an agricultural state. At the state department Secretary Hull gave virtutl official conformation to an Associated Press story of Saturday night disolosing a o^binet split on German peace policy- Hull was asked at his news conference for comment on published reports that Secretary Stimson and he op posed Morgenthau’s plan to break up German industry. In reply he disclosed that it is a subject of wide open dis cussion not only among of ficials here but also among American, British and Russian leaders. “The whole question of deal ing with the postwar German situation has been receiving attention by each of the govj ernments most interested, Hull said, “and that includes this government and the state department. “It would serve no purpose to say moro ot thib time ex cept that the higher officials of the governments concerned will reach mutual understand ings, I hope, at an early stage. It is very necessary that we wait until we know the true conclusions they reach.'*__ COUNTY MAY AID CITY DRAIN AREA A step to help the U. S. Public Health Service eliminate mosquito breeding areas was taken by the board of county commissioners in its weekly meeting yesterday when it moved to take under considera tion a plan proposed by J. A. Loughlin, city engineer, by which the city and county would join in furnishing the machines for the drainage of the area on lower Third St, Under this plan the city and county would furnish the machi nery and the public health service would do the work, in the drain ing of that area west of Greenfield lake from the river to Third street. Loughkn suggested that the city and the county halve the expense of the prqjegt. Further action is expected to* be taken next Mon day by the county. Sometime ago the area was drained by the Works Progress Ad ministration. The plan now under consideration j..oposes to open up the main canal a,nd the lateral drainage into that canal from the railr ' "'-ossing west to the Cape Fear river. The board voted to request the state to take the action requested in a petition signed by 30 residents of Myrtle Grove sound and living on the road leading from Roger’s landing to the Carolina Beach loop road. This petition requested that - - • 1 . 11 . 1 _ . .w. nvil xne DOaru Have moiautu « — culvert through and under the road and to replace a bridge now on the road which is in such bad con dition, due to heavy raips that the road is now impassable. A letter was read from Col. Adam E. Potts, commanding officer of Camp Davis, thanking th'e board and through it the citizens of New Hanover county for the splendid cooperation he has received dur ing his stay here. -V BRITISH DISCLOSE NEW SECURITY PLAN LONDON, Sept. 25.— <-T> —The British government made public tonight on the eve of the recon vening of parliament, a tremen dous social security plan affect ing every man, woman and child in Britain and the government’s answer, at least in part, to the controversial Beveridge plan of a year ago. During the first year it is esti mated the plan will cost $2,600, 000,000, compared with $2,788,000, 000 for the Beveridge plan. It covers human needs from the cradle to the grave. It would provide unemployment and sickness insurance; health service; widows pensions; retire ment pensions; family allowances; orphans allowance; motherhood grants and death grants. _v, Committee Considers Contempt Proceedings WASHINGTON. Sept. 25.— > —The Balkans were described today as “a morass which threatens to engulf all of the enemy forces that are left,” with chaos spreading- among the Germans in southern Greece, Albania and Yugoslavia. The Allied air command dis closed that since the summer of 1942 more than 5,000 tons of guns, ammunition and other supplies had been flown to Yugoslav partisans and patriot forces in other central and southern European countries. “Without this vast variety of supplies,” the report stated, “the partisan armies would most likely have remained guerillas, their losses would have been heavier, and the Balkans would have remained a German bastion, instead of a morass which threatens to*en gulf all of the enemy forces that are left.” German forces in the Bal- - kans are said to lack coordina tion with individual groups shifting for themselves, sur rendering or fighting more or less on their own responsibil ity, according to reports from Cairo. Experts expressed be lief a similar pattern of chaos would appear in Germany when the Wehrmacht disinte grates. The about-faces Romania and Bulgaria, and the swift ad vances of the Russians to the frontiers of Hungary, Yugo slavia and Greece placed the outflanked Germans in an un tenable position. Air blows coupled with partisan activities have dis rupted enemy communications throughout the Balkans. The air command reports said secret landing fields have ;been laid out in Yugoslavia, Greece, Albania and other countries, and that the number of such airports “would aston ish the Germans.”