"Our Hearts Have Quickened"

All week long Americans had been thinking about the fall of Berlin. The headlines and the radio shouted: "IT'S CLOSER AND CLOSER." Then, suddenly, with unexpected speed and unexpected ease, came the recapture of Manila (see WORLD BATTLEFRONTS).

General Douglas MacArthur, the great soldier, had returned. The first major capital of the Jap-conquered Pacific had been retaken; a prime symbol of Japanese dominance had fallen. Wrote President Roosevelt to Philippine President Sergio Osmena: "Our hearts have quickened. . . ."

A quickening of the heart and spirit was the chief reaction of Americans everywhere. But no hats were thrown in the air, no whistles tied down, no flag-waving revelers surged through the U.S. streets. U.S. civilians had singed their fingers in the burning optimism of last September. This time there seemed to be more optimism in the front lines.

U.S. troops, beginning a new push against Germany, were more than anxious to greet their Russian comrades. Stars & Stripes printed its first Russian lesson; signs of "WELCOME IVAN" blossomed in the Western Front's rubble. Into a U.S. battalion headquarters walked a deadpan U.S. sergeant, costumed as a Russian, who gestured at a map of Germany and said: "We have captured all this. Now, comrades, we need rest, beds."

U.S. civilians, contemplating the surge of the Russians, the burning of Berlin with U.S. bombs, knowing that even the fall of Berlin might merely mean harder fighting elsewhere, waited for a greater day to celebrate.

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