 Eight months after her liberation, France, a new and democratic France, holds her first free election. True, it is only for municipal officers. The general election must, in all justice, wait until prisoners and deportees return from Germany. But even in municipal elections, the people of France are once again exercising one of the great prerogatives of democracy. And in this Fourth Republic, for the first time in French history, women are given the ballot. It is men and women who, in their long ordeal, in their intimate knowledge of just how bitter the fight has been, have learned personally and powerfully, as perhaps never before, how precious, how much a part of human dignity is this simple matter of choosing by whom they shall be governed, who has once more, as so many times in history, fought for freedom, is once more free. Human presses begin to print the news as allied newspaper men take over throughout Germany. In the old university town of Heidelberg, there is an eager audience for the new four-page edition of D. Mittalungen. Trucks piled high with newspapers carry the copies out to suburban districts. Dissemination of the news forms one of the first tasks undertaken by the Allies in every German city. Many people won't wait for deliveries. Here in Heidelberg, they crowd around the printing plant, where the Nürcher Nachrichen formally was published, copies of the paper prepared by American soldiers of a six-army group unit. As they leave the building, people stop to scan the newspapers, which carry local, national and world news, the news of the free world. Five years of German occupation comes relief of all kinds and from all quarters. Here at a Canadian port, a thousand tons of seed grain pours into the hold of a French ship bound for France. Among the crew are members of the fighting French Navy, who will in addition be taking home with them a cargo of 3,000 tons of seed potatoes in time for this year's planting. As of exile, it is a prospect they find encouraging. This shipment goes to the French people under the plan of the Allied mutual aid. It is being followed by many others. To help meet the desperate needs of the Dutch, starving in isolated cities, food supplies from the United Nations are rushed to Holland by air. At an airfield in England, food is being loaded into Allied bombers that only the week before were battering Germany into submission. Once before the Germans touched them among the most fertile in Europe, over the broken bridges, the broken towns, across a land ravaged by the German retreat, fly the bombers. Pilot flares mark the target areas and the mercy cargo descends. In three days, over 800 tons of food for a stricken people. In 1445, after 2,073 days of war, after the longest European war in 130 years, the northern German armies surrendered unconditionally to Field Marshal Montgomery on Lüneburg Heath. General Admiral von Friedeberg, deputy for Grand Admiral Dönitz, was brought with his staff through the British lines and under a cold gloomy sky, with all due formality, discussed the terms and signed away the last vestige of German hopes. It was in this tent which served as Field Marshal Montgomery's headquarters that the last historic ceremony took place. Montgomery, who after Dunkirk had led the British armies on the long road back, behind him the ghosts of a score of battles. Alamain, Benghazi, Tunisia, Italy, Normandy, Belgium, Anheim, the Ardennes, names and campaigns to conjure with. Here in the tent on Lüneburg Heath came the long inevitable end. After General Admiral von Friedeberg, it is infantry general Kinsel who signs. For them too, a long road is ending. A road that started with conquest and ends now in utter defeat. Field Marshal Montgomery. He signs not only for himself, for his armies, for England and her allies. He signs also for all those who ever marched with him and fell at a hundred barricades. Who died for all of us, that with peace we may build a wiser world. Three days later on the 7th of May at Reims, in this simple school building, the last scene of the long and bitter struggle is enacted. The plenipotentiaries of the Allied Supreme Command present the terms under which the last German forces on all fronts are unconditionally surrendered. The hour the Nazi swore would never come had come. General Jodl signs for Germany. General Biedel Smith signs for the Allies. For for the Supreme Commander General Eisenhower. It is a happy hour for the free world which all through the long darkness has battled toward this dawn. I have the proud privilege of speaking for a victorious army of almost five million fighting men. They and the women who have so ably assisted them constitute the Allied expeditionary forces that have liberated Western Europe. They have captured or destroyed enemy armies totally more than their own strength. They have pushed triumphantly forward over the hundreds of miles, separating Sherford from Newbeck, Munich and Leipzig. Throughout the United Nations, the rejoicing bells ring forth. But for the remaining enemy of humankind, Japan, those bells are sounding an imminent doom. At last, the full arm might of liberty and freedom is free to turn from the elimination of the principal criminal to the crushing of her equally despicable satellite.