Curtain

One dictator lay dead in a square in Milan, his head on the breast of his dead mistress, his body cursed and spat upon.

It mattered little where the other one was, whether quavering in a Bavarian mountain fastness or raving mad in the tomb of Berlin—or dead, as the Hamburg radio this week reported. For him, too, the curtain had come down.

The European war was ending, with resolute force on the side of the victors, and the vanquished stripped of all dignity.

The phony peace that had swept the world (see below) was not too good to be true. It was merely a little too soon. One war, with all its agony, was all but over. And the other moved relentlessly in the same direction.