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Show BEHINj: ByPAULMALLON jpfi Released by Western Newspaper Union. EISENHOWER TO REPORT WHEN PEACE COMES WASHINGTON. The peace rumors ru-mors have been coming from nearly every place except the spot that matters inside Germany. The widest spread expectation can. be traced to a misunderstanding of newsmen from a White House order. Word was passed to them from those august portals to stand by for an important announcement. The newsmen figured it must be a peace offer. When no announcement was issued they deduced the warning warn-ing might have related to the Rund-stedt Rund-stedt peace offer (reported out oi Paris by INS) upon which the White House decided not to comment in the end. When the peace news does break eventually' it Is not likely to come from the White House but from General Eisenhower's headquarters, and there will be no possibility of doubting its authenticity. Arrangements to that effect have been made. The surrender will be military in all probability and made to him, rather than through Berlin-Washington political channels, and he is empowered to announce it. As for the Rundstedt peace offer, It was simply a bid to get us to sell out the Russians and therefore could not be seriously considered. The other rumors in general have sprung from financial authorities in New .York and were largely in-juiries in-juiries designed to sound out the administration. FACING DESTRUCTION The Germans, of course, are facing fac-ing complete destruction of their entire en-tire country. If anyone with any common sense could get into authority, author-ity, the Germans would decide to save themselves the rest of the fight. But all our inner reports from Germany suggest the people are phlegmatic and in a mood to take whatever comes from anyone. They have been beaten into complete docility by years under Hitler. The soldiers have shown an increasing in-creasing aptitude for surrendering surrender-ing since their bulge in Belgium was broken. After the professional profes-sional soldiers retired behind the Rhine to prepare for the spring campaign, the Volksturmers, left alone at the front, have not fought well. But no collapse in morale has been apparent yet, and the army as a whole is still tough. Events up to the Rhine and across the Remagen bridgehead have, of course, merely been leading toward a greater full scale assault. Even the brilliant Patton-Patch encirclement encircle-ment of the rich industrial Saar is merely preliminary. Neither was the collapse of the Ludendorf bridge an impediment to our further advance. We had three other bridges set up and working actually before the announcement of the collapse was given out. EARLY NEED SHOWN For our big-scale offensive, however, how-ever, we will need at least two or three other bridgeheads established in the north. The best fighting route to Berlin is across the northern plains. Ahead of us in the Remagen area is difficult hilly country of volcanic origin and of little use except for Nazi defense. But ahead of us in the north is the industrial Ruhr and thickly settled communities, vital to sustenance of the German effort It is being commonly reported our strategy will be to effect a Junction with the Russians, south of Berlin, rather than heading directly toward the capital. cap-ital. To do that, we will have to break through the Nazi defenses de-fenses with a roving armored column. Our immediate strategy no doubt will be to develop spearheads across the Rhine, switching our power pow-er from one to tho other, as the Russians do, to find the weaker resistance, re-sistance, rather than taking a fixed route. ' It will not be necessary to take Hamburg and the northern coastline, coast-line, although, if we could land, a force there in the rear of the German Ger-man defense line, they could be dealt a crushing blow. The Russians also have been mopping mop-ping up, reducing pockets in their rear, knocking out a lot of German forces therein, and drawing up their power to the Oder river as we are to the Rhine. Both are threatening to cross at any point. When that movement starts, you will know the final drive is on. Individual Americans had 148 billion bil-lion dollars In liquid savings at the close of 1944 according to the statistical sta-tistical report of the Securities and Exchange commission for the year. This tremendous latent purchasing power included 22 billions in currency, curren-cy, 39 billions in time deposits, 34 billions in demand deposits and 53 billions in government securities. I Savings for the year 1944 were Increased In-creased by the unprecedented sum of 40 billion dollars, ten times as much as in 1940. This in addition to war bond holdings. |