The ripple of the oil harbor water on the dock-piles is faint and indistinct. Vaguely, a tug out in the dark bleats like a lost sheep.

I stand on the deck of the H. S. Selandia, icy hands thrust deep into my trench coat pockets. My hands are warm, comfortably warm. They are at home, deep in niches meant for them. And yet I soon take them out. I touch the broad wooden rail and feel the rough salt from Atlantic spray that has dashed against it and dried away.

"The H. S. Selandia. Bound for Durban, South Africa, out of New York, U.S.A." I try to picture the Atlantic that lies ahead of me, the spray that will again beat upon the rail, washing away the rough salt, leaving more in its place. In my mind I see the familiar paintings of Winslow Homer, momentarily, but that is the Atlantic of other men and other times. Not the Atlantic ahead of me. The picture strongest in my mind is that of home. A quiet street. A river. The open country-side nearby. And people. Not just the people I know. People I have known. That verb-difference implies the friendship I am leaving. Home is warm and comfortable. I put my hands deep into my pockets again.

The Bush Terminal piers, Brooklyn, are not a pretty place. You go through dreary, dirty streets to reach them. The harbor beyond them is equally dreary and dirty. But nesting in that water and at those piers are ocean-faring ships. Ships which, these days, go to the far-flung battle fields with men and supplies.

They are the ships you read about. They are the ones which buckle, shudder, and slip to the bottom, with only the triumphant face in the conning tower to see where they had floated. On them ride and work the heros of the merchant marine. On them are grim captains who know the seas. On them are troops and cargos that must and do go through. To them the vast ocean is but a lake; the harbors, whether Brooklyn or Bombay, but an inlet. Men have written of ships sailing home to port. Could ships but speak, they would say that home to them is not the port, but the clear, clean trade winds and the rolling, salty sea. In the grime and dirt and smoke of ports they are out of place.

In the deep darkness of the early hours of morning, long before daylight, two tugs heave and puff at the side of the Selandia, churning the water into an oily foam in their efforts to unstick the big boat from its pier. Deftly, they back her out; determinedly, they grunt and push at her nose and turn her seaward. The throb of the Selandia's big deisel increases, and as the engine room rumbles to life, the tugs bleat and flee.

The excitement of our departure has kept me up. Now that we are edging carefully out of the harbor, I stroll the nearly empty decks watching the points of light on the shore slip by on either side. Like a newly launched ship, I am setting out on unforeseeable adventures. On the maps and globes, in the geography classes and books, the world had seemed vastly distant, unobtainable. My dreams of far lands, the ends of the earth, had seemed mere wishful thinking.

The world as it had been painted in what I had read in books and newspapers and seen in travelogues must be so full of wealth and plenty. The golden tropical isles of Trinidad. South Africa, where rough diamonds and veins of gold cropped out of the earth as plentifully as the vegetation of its rich soil to make it one of the greatest of Britain's dominions. The fabled wealth of India with its trade-laden cities, its indomitable fertility, and picturesque cultures. Egypt, where civilization was born, with the vast omnipresent fertility of the Nile bringing the fullness of life to its Moslem peoples. Perhaps I was to see all of these places.

I breathed deeply to calm my enthusiasm of anticipation. How long I had dreamed of the endless distance of the world and the plenty it bore its peoples! Now I would live those dreams, traverse those distances, and see the plenty, the wealth, the fertility, the foreign cultures, and the fullness of life of all the people the world over. It did not occur to me then that perhaps I was very young. I had no other picture of the world than this.

I was sailing from New York as one of more than 90 members of Unit XVI of the American Field Service. Our destination: the Middle East---Suez, Cairo, Alexandria, and into the desert westward. Our purpose, primarily, was to drive American Field Service ambulances with the British Eighth army in the war which was now aflame across the prairies of the world.

Our ship was a medium-sized combination passenger and cargo vessel. Before the war it was of Danish registry, running from Copenhagen through the Mediterranean to Singapore and the Indies. In the Speise Salon, where the passengers eat, was a huge wooden wall map showing its pre-war route. Now it was working for the United Nations under South African charter. Its officers were mainly Danish, its crew was largely Danish, English, and South African. On its cargo decks lay huge crated aircraft. In its hold were wheat, metals, commodities of war. It was a modern ship, fast, seaworthy.

I walked the decks of the Selandia wondering about the war. Inward bound boats passed us. Dimly, through the darkness, I saw riding at anchor the huge Drottningholm, recently returned from Europe with a cargo of diplomats and journalists. Journalists! The men who returned on that ship were well-known writers of powerful papers. They had travelled over the far-flung world and had seen what I was to see. They had painted the pictures of the men and women of other lands and the distant war, and through these men, Americans like myself had built up their conception of the war, the world, and America's place in both. The men who had returned from enemy countries had been the eyes of the American people there. If Far Eastern duplicity was to have caught my country up short, and, unprepared, plunged it into war, these eyes should have seen it in time. Had these men failed? Or had the people, even though seeing, preferred not to believe?

In my tunic pocket as I walked the deck I felt the reassuring rustle of my letter of credence and introduction. "This is to commend you," it read, "to David Briggs, who has authority to do special reportorial work for the Chicago Sun in connection with his other duties in the war zones."

Suddenly the stillness of the night was split by what sounded like the roll of a tremendous drum booming over the quiet water. Exaggerated in the darkness, the huge form of a warship passed us, blinking a signal light at the shore. Its drum-horn sounded again. Then its threatening, ghostly shape was engulfed in the darkness astern.

Although I was far from being a foreign correspondent, I was to be in a small way an eye, as yet in embryo, for people at home. Primarily, my job was ambulance driving. But "in connection with my other duties in the war zones" I was to write what I saw. I grinned to myself when I thought of how broad a term "war zones" was. If a long long-range enemy bomber flew over New York in a token raid and was shot down, I should already be in the "war zones." I laughed aloud at this preposterous idea and again I did not realize how young I was. For when the sun again came up over the Western Hemisphere and found us on the clear, brisk Atlantic, I was to learn that war was very close to New York.

The ship's whistle sounded the alarms

The noise was startling, gaunt, terrifying.

I leaped from my bunk, grabbed preserver, musette bag, trench coat, and sun hat. Major S., of the U.S. Marines, scurried out of the cabin across from mine. His eyes were wide; his fat cheeks flushed.

"Don't run!" he roared. "Keep calm!" over his shoulder.

The companion-ways were rattling with the shuffle of frightened feet. Mine was lifeboat three.

The evening breeze was cool on the boat deck. The water rolled silently on all sides as far as the eye could see. The Selandia's engine throbbed on. The first officer passed from lifeboat to lifeboat, checking attendance, the readiness of the crew at the davits, the time it took to assemble. My knees were weak, but I was reassured. It was a practice drill.

Such practice drills on coastal ships nowadays are not in fun. The ship's officers and crew wear serious miens. The passengers, lined up in life-jackets before the small boats hanging over the side, are hushed, tense. There is no laughter over small confusions. The wiseacres have lost their bravado; the socially gracious, their savoir-faire.,

We sailed from New York on the last day of June, 1942. Since January, nearly 100 ships had been sunk in the waters along the American east coast. The Navy termed this dangerous area the "Eastern Sea Frontier" and, toward the start of summer, it widened and tightened its shipping safeguards and reduced losses as the result of this constant vigilance.

On our first day out, we travelled in convoy. Around us, I saw many small, fast corvettes patrolling the waters ahead, astern, and on our flanks. Overhead constantly were Navy and Coast Guard planes. Even a magnificent silver blimp floated over us the entire day.

On the Selandia itself were a cannon on the stern and anti-aircraft machine guns on the bridge. The decks, well forward, held two giant metal pots that could envelop the ship in a smoke-screen.

One hundred and twenty miles down the coast from New York is Delaware Bay. Our convoy entered this haven of safety for the night. Submarines attack at night. Under the cover of darkness, when they are not so easily detected, U-boats can fire their torpedos at their leisure and at close range.

Another 120 miles south of Delaware Bay lies the mouth of Chesapeake Bay and the great naval base at Norfolk. These harbors have devices to keep out undersea invasions. Once inside, convoys are safe.

As we approached Norfolk, our escort vessels closed in around the convoy more completely. Patrol planes overhead increased in number. We were ordered to stand at lifeboat positions until we were in safer territory. Near the entrance of the harbor, we saw the reason for increased caution. In three different locations, the remains of ships could be seen. One wreck we passed nearer than the others. It was on its side, its superstructure under water. How long it had been there, we did not know. When we had gained the safety of Hampden roads, we sighed with relief.

That stop in Norfolk was a peaceful one. The night outside was very dark. A few lights twinkled from the shore where Norfolk lay. Planes droned lazily overhead, trying listlessly to evade twenty or more long fingers of light that stretched from the ground to the clouds, criss-crossed one another silently, centered upon a plane, followed its slow progress. A few members of the Field Service walked the decks watching the shore. Most of them, however, were below decks celebrating our so-far successful voyage, making a new friend in Jimmy, the blond Danish bartender who opened the ship's bar for the first time that night.

The Atlantic coast below Norfolk is barren of large, deep harbors in which ships may seek refuge. When the Navy instigated the night stop-overs in Delaware and Chesapeake bays, German U-boats moved south. More protective vessels became available. Less than a dozen old four-stacker destroyers were spared from duties in Iceland and some of the fast, powerfully armed corvettes of Britain's Royal Navy joined the Atlantic patrol. By mid-May, convoy systems of protection were organized as far as Key West and sinkings were reduced considerably. U-boats continued to lurk in these waters, but the maritime battle was no longer one-sided.

We left Hampden Roads in such a convoy. With us were sixteen freighters. Over us continually were small and medium bombers, patrol and observation planes. Around us sailed a half dozen corvettes, two destroyers, and a cruiser. Our convoy was a large one; our protection, magnificent. It was on our second day out of Hampden Roads that I learned what this protection meant.

Jim Atkins is from Madison, Wisconsin, If you know him, you know that fact. To him, Madison is a beautiful city representing the best of everything, as indeed it is and does. He, too, is a journalist, and is commissioned to write for the people of Madison from the "war zones."

I had known Jim in school. But he had left school early in 1942 to drive an American ambulance in the Middle East. He had sailed out into the Atlantic on a lone Dutch freighter. U-boats in those early months had rather their own way about the freedom of the seas. Jim had spent long hours of darkness and daylight on the cold Atlantic in an open boat. Fortunately, the survivors of the Dutch freighter were picked up and deposited in Bermuda. Jim had returned to Madison, reoutfitted, and was now again on his way to the Middle East.

He was altogether a very likable and very human individual. He liked to talk, especially about the American Indian or his strange fixation about the vitamin value to submarine crews of the grapefruit husks thrown into the sea by ships. But on the afternoon of our second day out of Harnpden Roads, as we stood together on the sloping metal deck at the very bow of the Selandia, he was silent.

We were leaning over the rail watching the sharp prow of the ship cut into the water. Evidences of the Gulf Stream were all about us. The air was warm and the slight swell of the waves was tinted a velvety pale blue. Bobbing hunks of green sea weed swirled past us on the surface. Occasionally, the sleek black bodies of porpoises could be seen roller-coasting through the waves. Flying fish would break the surface just ahead of us, flutter from wave-crest to wave-crest, and plunge back into the water.

The ships of our convoy were arranged in three parallel rows. The Selandia was the second ship in the center row. Sailing back and forth ahead of us was the cruiser. The two destroyers and the smaller corvettes were on either side and astern.

Jim suddenly broke the silence. "You know," he said, "I think something's going on."

"What?" I asked, still watching the water curl up and fall away from the sharp bow.

"Look at that destroyer off our port."

I looked. The destroyer was racing ahead, blinking a signal light at the cruiser ahead of us. The cruiser soon turned about and joined the destroyer. Together, they approached an area off our port stern and began circling.

Jim and I climbed to the main deck for a better view. Out of the west a low drone was heard. Soon three light bombers appeared. Two circled the whole convoy continually. The third joined the searching cruiser and destroyer.

I suddenly noticed the cover was off the cannon on our stern. The gun crew, with metal helmets on their heads, were standing ready.

The cruiser and destroyer were still circling. All at once a sheet of water sprayed up behind the cruiser and a muffled explosion shook the ship under us slightly. Suddenly another. Then another. In all, six depth charges were dropped on the marauding submarine. The bomber above the warships tilted forward, lost altitude, then swooped up again. A stick of bombs plunged into the sea and slender plumes of water geysered up in quick succession where the bombs had landed.

The ships of the convoy, meantime, continued on as before, still in the same relative positions, still at the same speed---seemingly undisturbed, confident in the effectveness of their protectors. The planes stayed with us, circling about the ships, for a short time, then disappeared back into the west. The cruiser and destroyer lingered where the submarine had been until they were almost out of sight behind us. Late in the afternoon, as darkness settled down around us, they returned. No more was heard of the attacking U-boat.

We all hoped it had been sent to the bottom, that it had not evaded the depth charges to stalk us until, under the cover of darkness, it could make a safer attack.

In the early hours of the following morning, the Selandia's lounge was nearly deserted. In one corner, a dozen or so poker players were still at their games. Pete Goldberg had the words 'I'll raise----" half formed in his mouth, when, shattering the stillness of the night, a violent crash of metal seemed to shake the ship to its core. Pete, Jake Vollrath, Cliff Saber, Ed Koenig, Bill Schorger, Major S. and the others were galvanized to action.

Money and promising hands were all that was left at the poker tables. Grabbing life preservers, the players made an immediate exodus to the deck. Several bleary-eyed, pyjama-clad sleepers, rudely awakened by the crash, scrambled out the companion ways onto the deck. The ship's whistle failed to give the expected alarm. The Selandia sailed peacefully on. The frightened passengers on deck looked ruefully at the dark water, straining every sense for more signs of disaster, wondering. A member of the crew strolled down the deck to reassure them. An iron door on the side of the ship, having come unfastened, had slammed shut. We weren't torpedoed.

Fear is merely a state of mind. It is isolated from danger by time. When even the most overpowering dangers can be met by action, by self-defence, by counter-thrusts, or by evasion, fear is not present. The threatened is too occupied by his defence, his action, to have room for fear. His heart beats faster, he is excited, but he is not afraid. When the action is completed, successfully or unsuccessfully, then fear creeps in. Or, when danger is present or anticipated, but not understandable and counteractions are impossible, the endangered is confounded. Into his mind, unoccupied by action, creeps fear.

When the crash interrupted the poker games, the players grabbed for their life preservers. This was merely a secondary reflex. They rushed to the decks. This action was natural. The ship was sinking; they would get where they could leave it quickly. This was their counter-thrust. When they arrived on deck all was peaceful around them. The ship's whistle was not screeching the alarm. The Selandia was not listing, it was not sinking. They had heard what they thought was a torpedo hit the ship. There was the awful danger. Then, as they stood on the deck, waiting, wondering, they shivered more from fear than from the cold.

Two days later, as we were sailing along the southern coast of Florida, well out of sight of land, we passed a destroyer going north. With it, on the surface, was a captured submarine. As I learned later, it was an Italian undersea craft which had been lying in ambush for our convoy. Just before we reached it, it was detected by the destroyer. A few depth charges damaged it so seriously that continued submergence meant death to the Italian crew. It came to the surface and surrendered.

Our magnificent convoy protection, in the air as well as on the surface, had saved us from two attacks of which evidence was visible. How many more enemy submarines might have attacked us but, seeing our strong defenders, wisely steered clear of us, we shall never know. We were still deep in the submarine danger zone. U-boats lurked in numbers throughout the Caribbean and along the South American coast as far as the equator. But we now travelled with stronger confidence and peace of mind.

When we left Norfolk, convoys from there to Key West had been in use less than fifty days. The Navy, awaiting proof of their effectiveness, had said very little about them in the press. From our experiences, I could testify to their effectiveness. Whether the Navy still wanted their success on the Eastern Sea Frontier to remain a secret was, of course, in the hands of naval censors. To me, it was news. News meant a story to the Chicago Sun.

Late in the evening of the day we had seen the captured sub, I stood on the deck watching the stars. Suddenly I noticed that our course had changed. We were no longer going south. The north star was squarely off our starboard. I thought we might be zig-zagging, so I remained on deck for an hour. Our course held steadily westward. This could mean only one thing: Key West. Probably sometime on the following day. I hurried below to my cabin to write my story.

In the morning, our course had shifted to the north. We were rounding the westernmost of the Florida keys. As we weren't docking, no one was to be allowed ashore, I learned, unless he had a reason. That would mean that only the Selandia's Captain Vaering, Captain Tuckerman, in charge of A.F.S. for the trip, Major B., A.F.S. public relations officer, and Major S., U.S.M.C., would be allowed ashore.

With my story in hand, I called on Major B. in his cabin. Could I, I asked, be allowed ashore to send this story. Major B. read the account of our protection along the Eastern Sea Frontier and frowned.

"Of course, I can't prevent you from sending this story if you insist," he said, "but I strongly advise you not to send it."

I asked his reasons.

"In the first place, you would be putting our convoy in mortal danger by showing our route to the enemy; and in the second place, you're using entirely the wrong psychology on the American public. You should play up the sinkings, not the protection. If the people think we're succeeding in preventing sinkings along the east coast it will lead to a feeling of complacency. And that's bad, you know. Very bad."

It is true that I was not a journalist with years of experience behind me. But what training I had had told me that people in a democracy work best, and the democracy itself works better, if the people are told the truth. With the experience of Pearl Harbor and the German U-boat threats fresh in its mind, the public had not its old pre-war confidence in the American Navy. To win a war, the people must have confidence in their fighting forces. And a victory in one part of the fight will give a war-time people the spirit and confidence needed to win victories in other parts f the war.

The Navy had won a definite victory on the Eastern Sea Frontier. To my mind, the people should know of this in as complete a story as I could tell as an eye-witness. Major B.'s second reason rather irritated me.

As for his first reason, that of giving away our position, I did not know sufficiently about convoy routes to judge its importance. I didn't think the Major did either. In my story,. I had carefully avoided naming places or mentioning our position at any time. The story, however, would carry a Key West dateline.

On the deck, I met the first mate.

"Could I have permission," I asked him, "to see Captain Vaering on the bridge when he isn't busy?"

"Sure," he answered amiably. "Go on up right now. Captain'd be glad to see you."

In his cabin just behind the bridge, I found stout, friendly Captain Vaering, seated in an easy chair. His Danish accent lent a sense of deliberation and knowledge to his words. I explained my relation to the Chicago Sun and showed him my story.

He read it and nodded his head in approval.

"That is the sort of story the American papers should have more of," he stated.

"Would it, by showing our route, or in any other way, expose this or subsequent convoys to any danger?" I asked.

"Not at all." He made a wry face.. "The Germans know all the routes." He considered the story for a moment. "I'm going ashore in Key West tomorrow. I’ll send it through the naval censors for you if you like."

Of course I accepted at once.

"You see me just before I leave the ship and give me the story then," he added.

Within an hour, word had reached Captain Tuckerman that I had been on the bridge talking with Captain Vaering. I was summoned before him, Major B., and Major S.

"We've heard you were on the bridge," Captain Tuckerman said. "Didn't you know of the rule that no one was to go to the bridge without permission?"

"I had heard that rule, sir, and I got the permission of the first mate before going there." I still could not understand the beetle-browed anger on the faces of my inquisitors.

Captain Tuckerman's face cleared somewhat. "The rule meant you had to get my permission first. But it was a logical mistake on your part. I'm afraid the rule wasn't very clearly stated."

Major B. was still frowning. "What did you go onto the bridge for?"

'To ask Captain Vaering his opinion of my story and whether it would endanger our convoy."

"What did he say?"

"He said it wouldn't put us in any danger."

Major B .'s frown darkened considerably. "Are you still going to send that story after I have advised you not to?" he asked.

"I'm afraid I am," I replied. "Captain Vaering offered to take it ashore for me and see that it got to the naval censors, so there will be no need for me to leave the ship."

Major S., accustomed to the more rigorous military discipline of the Marine corps and upset at not finding it in such a civilian organization as the Field Service, drew in breath sharply between his teeth.

"Young man," he said angrily, "you have committed the unpardonable sin of going over the heads of your superior officers. If you send that story ashore I shall personally go to the Navy censorship office and see that it is never sent to any newspaper."

The next morning, as Captain Vaering was coming down the deck toward the rope ladder hanging down to the small boat that was to take him ashore, he saw me and smiled. He said nothing, but he shook his head slightly in the negative. I, too, said nothing, for I thought I understood what had happened.

This, indeed, was strange censorship.

When we reached Cape Town, I saw the last of Major S. Major B. left us there to fly to Cairo. I immediately cabled the story, now enlarged to cover our entire Atlantic crossing, to the Chicago Sun. The censors in both South Africa and the United States didn't cut a word from the story. It had been delayed forty days by this remarkable example of unorthodox censorship and in that time the Navy released to the press the details of its great victory on the Eastern Sea Frontier. The Sun changed the lead and in the headline played up the captured Italian submarine. The Navy's victory was no longer news.

Our stay "outside" Key West was a dull and hot one. We lay at anchor three days with the city---and, more important, the terri firma of Key West---within sight but dishearteningly beyond our reach. This was the last we saw of the United States.

To lessen the fatigue of the seemingly endless days with nothing to do but look longingly shoreward, a routine of sorts was established for us. We spent the morning studying the Red Cross first aid text in small groups and in calesthenics and the study of military drill. Subsequently, in our ambulance work in Africa and Italy, we found very little use for first aid, and, attached to the British army as we were, American army military drill was more than useless. But it did take up time and the calesthenics were good for us.

This routine was maintained aboard the Selandia all the way to Cape Town. When we got away from shore, where the sea became rougher, trying to march men in column movements along the narrow, rolling decks became an endless source of amusement.

In the afternoons we rested during the hottest part of the day, and then could spend time in the pool.. or in noncompulsory classes in Arabic under Clifford Saber, Syrian-born American artist. Another series of classes in "commando fighting" was taught by a passenger named Tony. He was Greek and his last name was unpronounceable. He had been a guerrilla in the Spanish war.

When we left the safety of Key West, we ran into even more intensive submarine danger than we had on the Atlantic seaboard. I don't believe Captain Vaering got much sleep during the twelve days it took us to reach Trinidad.

Since the U-boat defence on the east coast had been perfected, the Germans cunningly moved their emphasis of attack to the Caribbean trade routes, Here they had made bold and telling blows on Allied shipping, even sending submarines close to the mouth of the Mississippi. The most dangerous areas were those of the Yucatan Channel west of Cuba and the Windward Straits between eastern Cuba and Haiti. Ships bound for the Panama Canal had to enter the Caribbean through one or the other of these comparatively narrow passages.

The Navy was not slow in extending its convoy and air patrol methods of protection to these areas when the emphasis of attack had been shifted southward by the Reich. Short months after our passage through this area the German control of the underseas here was broken. The long arm of our shipping defence had outreached the practical operational area of the attackers. The U-boat command recalled their ships to the North Atlantic and adopted the "wolf pack" system of harassing shipping bound for England.

But when we left Key West, organized shipping protection southward had been in effect only a few weeks. Ours must have been among the first half dozen convoys to brave the German attempts to break down the Navy's extended methods.

And ours was quite a convoy indeed. Fourteen other ships---tankers and freighters---were with us. Civilian air patrol craft were overhead continually and two destroyers and a number of the efficient little corvettes formed our protection. But in spite of this, Captain Vaering had his worries.

Our route was along the northern coast of Cuba, through the Windward Straits, and thence to Trinidad. But it wasn't quite as simple as that. We were slowed down by the less speedy freighters in the convoy, which made us easier targets for long-range torpedo shots.

One evening, as we were sailing in sight of the Cuban coast---a really beautiful scene with the sun setting slowly in an aurora of gold behind the high, mellow, rolling hills, we were told two submarines were reported in the waters ahead of us. Patrol bombers increased in number and frequency overhead, an alert was called in our crew, the guns were in readiness, and extra watches were posted. We were filled with ominous expectancy for the-blow that never came. But just because U-boats don't attack when they're expected to, the tension isn't relieved, They sometimes follow convoys for days. And if anything, the tension increased during the events of the ensuing days.

For we entered Windward Straits,

This entrance to the Caribbean was one of the areas literally "infested" with submarines. On our first day there, the Captain reported that a torpedo, evidently fired from some distance, had narrowly missed a ship in our convoy." It wasn't until I reached Cape Town that I learned from one of our ship's officers that that "narrowly missed ship" was the Selandia. He said it had been seen churning past a few feet from our bow. The fact that it had been fired from some distance was a tribute to the thoroughness of our protectors. It probably saved our ship.

It was obvious that submarines were following us, were planning to pounce on us when they had the chance. We spent one night circling aimlessly to confuse them. During our first twenty-four hours in that dangerous Strait, twelve submarines were spotted in the waters near us by aircraft.

The following morning, as we emerged from the narrow waters, Captain Vaering was given another headache. Two ships of our convoy, bound for a nearby port, probably Porto Rico, left us with a destroyer as escort. We had to spend the morning and early afternoon nearby at a dead stop awaiting the return of the destroyer. We were like sitting ducks to any U-boat that dared approach us.

Eventually the destroyer returned, and the convoy proceeded at its laborious five or six knots southward toward Panama.

The lurking danger in the waters, however, didn't dampen the spirit of the passengers or crew. For my part, it was a lack of a full realization of the danger and a preoccupation with the affairs aboard ship that kept me from being continually on edge and I think that was true of most of the others.

On our first night out of Windward Straits, a half dozen darkskinned South African members of the crew came into the dining salon and, with the aid of a few drinks brought down from the bar as our inducement, they played on three guitars and a mandolin and sang for us several native South African songs and almost any modern American "swing" number we named.

We joined in on most of their songs. Drinks flowed freely. Everybody was gloriously happy. But in the crow's nest on the forward mast, on the bridges of the Selandia and the everpresent destroyers, grim men realized our danger and felt the responsibility for our safety weigh heavily on their shoulders.

If we could have made a bee-line through the Caribbean at top or even normal speed the danger to our ship would have been considerably lessened. But we couldn't. As part of a convoy, we stayed in formation with the other ships for mutual protection. First, we had to wait a day in these waters near Jamaica for the destroyer to return from Porto Rico. Then, instead of heading directly toward Trinidad, we had to go southward almost to Panama, for several ships with us were headed for the Pacific and needed our protection most of the way. And the slow speed we were forced to maintain was another source of danger.

The convoy system has its draw-backs, especially on the Captain's nerves, but it got us through.

One morning, after we had left the Panama-bound ships and were at last headed for Trinidad, a corvette dropped depth charges on a submarine still following us. Again the convoy system was proving its worth.

The following morning, we saw trenchant reminders of a fate that might easily have been ours. Carleton Richmond, who was teaching us first aid, interrupted the informal class and we stood silently at the starboard rail and watched two small, apparently empty life boats, tied to each other, float mutely past. What a story they might have told! One of our corvettes waited with them until they were far astern of us to destroy them lest they give a clew to the enemy in identifying sunken ships.

Those last nights in the Caribbean were of unforgettable beauty. The water was calm. The light from the silver crescent moon sparkled across the ripples to the west. For the first time on our long voyage, our nightly companion, the Southern Cross, was visible.

And then one morning as I stood watch, the early light of dawn back the darkness and revealed in the distance the precipitous mountains that rise straight up out of the sea. The mountainous islands of Trinidad.

It as Land-Ho!

Everyone as on deck early that day, hungrily feasting his eyes on this green isle with its long, romantic history, avidly watching our progress into the harbor of Port-of-Spain.

As we approached the main island of the Trinidad group, the coast of Venezuela was visible in the distant west. But the far mountains of Venezuela were worth only a cursory glance. The steep-sided coast of Trinidad, heavily burdened by its lush jungle growth, held our attention.

The convoy, now in single file, edged around the Island and into the harbor of Port-of-Spain. We anchored about a mile from shore. From the deck we could see the larger buildings near the waterfront and the white flakes of smaller houses among the trees up the mountainside. It was like a large, built-over amphitheater. This was Port-of-Spain, the ancient city backed by Henry Morgan, pirate, in the 16th century; now the key port, capital, and principal city of a modern British colony. We longed to inspect it more closely.

Our officers went ashore, arranged visas for us, and at dawn of the following day, we climbed down into a harbor launch and our feet were soon on the first solid ground since New York.

If we had looked forward to finding Trinidad an untouched tropic island paradise, we were disappointed. Here had come civilization, and with it now the war.

This fairly small island possession of Great Britain has a comparatively important part to play in his war. On it are stationed an unusually large number of American and British troops. It is at once a training ground and a defense outpost of the Western Hemisphere. While German control was maintained in Dakar, possible jumping off place for an offensive that didn't seem so unreasonable a few years ago, Trinidad was an important fortress for the defense of the South American mainland, the Southern Caribbean, and the Panama canal.

In addition to its defense aspects, Trinidad provided an important refueling point for ships en route to Cape Town and points east. To the long line of supply going to the Middle East, to Russia, to India and Burma, and even to the South Pacific, this island, with its magnificent harbor, was a key point. Ships renewed their food, water, and fuel supplies here.

Wartime air travel also found Trinidad an important stepping stone. Fighters and bombers, cargo and passenger transports came from the States to Trinidad, thence to Natal, Brazil, and to Bathurst in Africa (a British possession north of Bolama) where broad landing fields had been cleared in the jungle. An alternate route from Trinidad was directly to Monrovia, capital of the Republic of Liberia, founded nearly a century ago by America as a refuge for the freed slaves. From here they flew to Lagos in the British crown colony of Nigeria, to Leopoldville at the mouth of the Congo river, and thence to the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan and down the long course of the Nile to Egypt. Here some planes, in those days, went to the desert front. Others continued on across Syria, Turkey, the Caucasus mountains, up the valley of the Don to Moscow. Thus the small isle of Trinidad was an important station in the aircraft supply route. It did its part in supplying the superior air force which assured the success of General Montgomery's desert campaign. When we were there, in mid-July of 1942, thirty to forty Martin B-25's were landing, refueling, and taking off daily on their way to the Middle East and Russia.

But Trinidad is feeling this war in other ways. During my short tour of the island, I saw the effect of the war on its normal peacetime supply of ordinary commodities. The stores were, in most cases, forlornly barren of dry goods. Although domestic food supplies have been expanded, its civil population has had to cut down and do without previously imported foods. In a conversation I had with the superintendant of the Government Printing House, I learned of a paper shortage and a scarcity of type metals and ink.

In peace time, Trinidad enjoyed a thriving tourist trade. That of course, has been cut off entirely. Resort hotels, such as the beautiful Queen's Park, are beginning to look slightly seedy and their prices have sky-rocketed. The race track is overgrown with weeds.

Aside from the immediate effects of the war and the great influx of soldiers on the social and economic life of Trinidad, there is still a great cleavage and separation of class. The English, those who own plantations, who run the business and trade, and those who work for the government, are definitely set apart from the mass of laborers, the Negros, the East Indians, the Hindus, the West Indians, the Chinese, and the conglomerate mixtures of races and colors. The English whites had for long been the only ones to reap the wealth of this island's natural fertility and its magnetism as a tourist rendezvous. The others of the population worked the island but remained poor. The look of poverty and want and economic fear on their faces was an old one of many generations. Now that the war had stricken the trade and tourists from Trinidad, the English too were feeling poverty. The plantations, the farms back in the hills were producing more than ever. Almost everyone worked. But prices had shot up and want was everywhere. Here amid the plenty of a fertile island, the people---all of them---suffered, ate less, did without more, and were economically fearful.

The spirit of victory was there among the English. They were being forced to sacrifice and they knew why. But to the people, poverty is the rule. The war has intensified it and they feel it more acutely, but they have always felt it.

We landed early enough to watch the native population on their way to work pausing on the streets to drain their breakfast of sweet milk from cocoanuts sold by vendors from wagons. We wandered up toward the hills along Picadilly street, eastward into the native quarter. The squat and squalid "suburban" huts were those we had seen from the ship, white flakes among the green of the trees from that distance. But now we were among them, they were not so white. The odor of the filth they stood in was on the morning air. This was where the workers of the city lived and felt and breathed their poverty.

Then we crossed the city to the Queen's Park hotel for breakfast of toast and coffee. The heat of the day was coming on rapidly. We rested for a time in the cool, spacious, deserted bar of the hotel, and then we were off touring the city, looking (as closely as we were able) at the army camps and barracks, sightseeing through the shady and magnificent botanical garden surrounding the British Governor's palace, and bicycling about the adjacent countryside.

When we returned to the ship that night, we were very tired. But we were happy to have been for the day among new sights on solid, unconfined ground.

But where was my golden tropical isle of Trinidad? I had not found it. Here was the wealth of fertile, tropical earth, but where were the people who received this gift? They were not there. The war caused new poverties, but the largest and greatest of suffering and fear in Trinidad were hereditary, as ancient as the white man's exploitation.

Our twenty-three day voyage to Cape Town was a long and lonesome one. For the first time since we left New York, we were sailing alone.

Leaving Port-of-Spain, we had been part of a convoy of twenty ships. Our protection was light---only a destroyer and two corvettes. On the evening of our second day of eastward sailing from Trinidad, the Selandia whistled "Good Luck" to the other ships and the convoy broke up. The warcraft returned to Trinidad. Some freighters headed south-west toward Brazil and Argentina. The slower vessels disappeared astern. The Selandia was on its own.

Our speed was increased and we zigzagged continually. We maintained a course eastward until we were close to the African bulge and then we turned southward. During those days the weather and sea roughened considerably. We bucked a strong northwest gale and ploughed through rollers that sent sheets of spray flying over the forward decks. The more rabid fresh air and exercise fans such as Nick Madeira, Jim Doughty, Lem Billings, Sam Jacobs, Ed Fenton, Brook Cuddy, and Ed Welles, got great joy from standing on the heaving forward hatch these storm days and letting the cold pellets of sea-spray splash on their naked bodies.

Our daily routine was maintained as much as possible. Everyone was feeling a quiet relief now we were beyond the most dangerous submarine waters. Once or twice the gun crews had gunnery practice with the stern cannon and the anti-aircraft machine guns. With the latter they shot down a large kite and when it had floated sufficiently far away astern, they opened up on it with the cannon. They were remarkably accurate in spite of the continual heaving of the deck.

In the first days of August, we crossed the equator. The celebration and initiation into the realm of Neptune was a momentous one for most of us. The ceremony is, of course, a secret one and I shall not divulge any of the salty secrets of the aquatic god here. All of us went into the ship's pool that day, usually at an awkward angle, and most of us were disinclined to eat again for many hours after the induction. The ship's doctor, Jimmy the bartender, the barber, and several previous equator-crossers of the AFS, among them Dick Hobson (who played Queen Neptune), Hilgard Pannes, Lester Collins, and others, administered the ordeal.

Not many days later a great white albatross circled our ship and settled down to a steady flight astern. Soon several more joined him. They would often glide for great lengths of time without moving a wing, seeming to float in the air in our wake at ease. When garbage was thrown overboard they had a feast.

As we got nearer and nearer the end of our trans-Atlantic voyage, the eyes of those on board spent more time searching the horizon. Only once since Trinidad had we seen anything and that was another ship that passed on its way to America. It had been but a small spot on the edge of our saucer of sea. Now we were watching for the welcome sight of land. Except for our one day ashore in Trinidad, we had been forty-four days at sea, forty-four days in which the size of the Selandia had seemed to shrink, in which we were confined to the decks, salon, and cabins of the ship. Now we were longing for the stability of a distant hill. We wanted to stretch our legs and look at trees and buildings and be able to feel that we could walk any distance in a given direction.

Our forty-fifth day out of New York was a disagreeable one. I had the daybreak watch. The deck was dark and wet. Rain drizzled down from heavy black clouds, and a cold wind was blowing. I stood on the port quarter-deck with a blanket wrapped around me over my trench coat. Slowly the first light of day felt its way through the threatening clouds. Gradually, as I looked ahead into the dark distance, the shape of a mountainous horizon rivalling the clouds in darkness became distinct. It was the rocky southern tip of the continent of Africa.

At last our long Atlantic voyage was over. The dim twilight of daybreak gradually gave way to a rainy daylight. The heights of the shore became clearer as we moved along them toward Cape Town. We had left America behind us and now we were about to set foot on the ancient continent of Africa. A land war was being fought on this continent and we felt nearer to it. But Cape Town is a long way from Egypt where the British then were making a desperate stand before Alexandria and the Suez canal.

Although Cape Town was the entire length of the continent from the active battle, the city and the whole Union of South Africa were affected by this war. They were in it along with their fellow dominions of the British Empire. Perhaps Cape Town, because of its position on the supply routes both from America and from Australia and New Zealand, felt the war more than most parts of the Union. There was a continual influx of soldiers, thousands of them, from the troop ships going and coming between the active front and the supply sources.

As the Selandia sailed into Cape Town harbor, a large convoy of these troop ships appeared and, as they had priorities on the docking space, we had to wait in the harbor for a day and a half before we could go ashore. It was a tantalizing delay, lessened in intensity by the continual rumor that we were about to dock at any moment and by the view of the city which lay at the foot of the huge flat-topped escarpment called Table Mountain. Those of us who had field glasses during that delay in the harbor used them to get a little closer to the land, the docks, the buildings in the city, and even to watch with curiosity the cable car that was barely visible on its trips to and from the top of Table Mountain.

On the afternoon of our second day in the harbor, the Selandia hoisted her anchor and moved slowly into an inner harbor and slid gently up to a quai. Army trucks took on our baggage and we marched through the dockyards into the city to the railway station. As we were marching up a low hill away from the waterfront, I looked back at the Selandia. Already most of the ship was out of sight behind a warehouse. She was again in the smoke and grime of a port. This was how she must have looked when I first saw her in Brooklyn, but I wouldn't have recognized her as the same ship. In Brooklyn she had a feeling of strangeness about her. She was then a new thing in my experience. But here, as I was looking back at her in Cape Town harbor, she had a familiarity, a character that only those who had lived in her could know. She had been our home, our fortress, our magic carpet during a long and dangerous voyage. It had been an interesting companionship and I rather regretted leaving her.

At the railway station we boarded a train which took us out of town through the fertile rolling countryside to a small station which was known, in true British military fashion, as Retreat. Here we formed a column again and marched the short distance to the Pollsmore transit camp. We were assigned four long, low buildings equipped with beds. This was to be our home for our one-week stay in the Cape Town vicinity. We spent the early evening having our first taste of British army rations, trying to sort out our baggage in the dark from the pile left near our billets by the army trucks, and finally drinking a bottle of beer in the sergeants' recreation rooms.

The next morning we were awakened by a bugle. Soon, outside, we could hear the beat of marching feet regulated by cacophonous, gutteral, unintelligible commands. It was a parade of the Negro troops of the South African army. They came marching in perfect cadence down the street between the billets, their arms swinging up to shoulder height, their feet lifting high. On their heads they wore hats resembling sombreros with one side of the brim pinned up to the crown. When they reached our billet, the last on the street, they were given the order to about face while marching. They stopped and, with their legs still marking time, their knees coming almost to waist height in exaggerated steps, they turned slowly, stamping their feet severely and in unison, until they were facing the direction they came from and then stepped off. It was beautifully executed and the expressions on their faces showed they loved it. Rhythm was born in the villages of their Bantu and Zulu ancestors.

When it became known that a bunch of "Yankees" were quartered in Pollsmore, we were beseiged by members of the South African Army. They wanted to know what the States were like, if we had any United States currency we would sell them as souvenirs, and even challenged us to a game of football. It was not football of the American variety, but the British "rugger" where it's every man for himself and God help you if you've got the ball.

We were given considerable freedom to see Cape Town and the nearby villages. We could not take any long trips inland to see the whole of the Cape Province as I would have liked to do, for we had to report at camp every twenty-four hours. But we did see Cape Town.

At our first opportunity, several of us rode the cable car to the top of Table Mountain which stands as a massive stone backdrop to the city. When it is cold and the clouds settle down on its flat top in a thick layer of whiteness with a fringe at the edge banging down the precipitous sides, it actually looks like a vast table covered with a snowy tablecloth.

The cable car is small and creeps slowly upward. When it is mid-way, you can look down on the tops of the trees far below you. As it gradually nears the top; the countryside, the panorama of the city, the Lion's Head mountain to the west of the city, the long crescent of the harbor, and the water that reaches as far as the eye can see southward are unfolded before you. From the very top the view is magnificent. Jim Atkins and I hiked about on the boulders and twisted bed-rock of the top, finding a deep gorge off to the east, trying to get a different view of the city.

But it is not only the beauty of the city which makes Cape Town an interesting place. The people themselves show the continual inflow of troops of all nations a remarkable brand of hospitality. They do everything possible to make the soldiers welcome and to insure their having an enjoyable leave ashore when the crowded transports call on their way to or from a war zone. There was, however, one brand of soldier Cape Town citizens entertained with slight reluctance, if the stories we heard there are true. The practical joking and good humored pranks of the Australian troops are feared there almost as much as their fabled spirit in battle is feared by the Germans and Japanese. South African hosts, with a haunted look in their eyes, tell you wild tales of suffering at the hands of the irrepressible Aussies.

How much truth there is to these stories is hard to tell, but we heard them on every hand. Here are some typical tales:

One Australian soldier stood on a main street talking to a newly-made South African friend.

"Want to see something funny?" he asked. The friend dubiously assented.

The Australian crossed the street to four unguarded baby carriages standing before a department store and switched the babies quickly. The first two mothers soon came out of the store and wheeled off their own carriages, but not their own babies. The change was not noticed until the third and fourth mothers arrived.

On another occasion, four Australians discovered a small English Austin car on Adderley street. Most of these soldiers from down under are big men and they easily picked up the Austin by the fenders and, amid the cries of one small feminine occupant, carried it into the parcel post room of the nearby post office.

"Put a stamp on this and send it back where it bloody well came from," they told the astonished clerk.

Another prank which horrified the more staid citizens of Cape Town concerns a comely maiden in her early twenties who met a group of Australians out to have some fun. They very quickly stripped her completely, locked her in an out-door glass enclosed telephone booth, and, forming a cordon about the booth, called on the passers-by to pay three pence admission.

The Australian just seemed to have little respect for the law as one Cape Town bobbie (who was left in his undershorts at his street corner) and most of the local population can testify.

Into this city came a pot-pourri of all the fighting forces of the world. Australians and New Zealanders on their way to the desert front, Americans going to India and the Burma front, Indians on their way to Egypt, sailors of the British, Free French, American, Greek, and Norwegian navies.

One afternoon, as I was walking down a Cape Town street, I saw coming toward me two remarkable figures. They wore blue and white tams with a red tassle and, blouses with a wide V opening coming nearly to their waists revealing the horizontal blue and white stripes of a tight-fitting shirt. One was very tall and one was very short. The tall one had obviously been drinking. The short one hitched up his bell-bottomed trousers, stopped me, and said in a gentle voice, "Pardon, m'sieur. Cood you tell me police whare I cood buy a drink?"

I indicated a hotel where I knew drinks were served on a very pleasant balcony overlooking the street. He touched my sleeve.

"Pardon again, m'sieur. Are you Américain?"

I affirmed his suspicion.

"Alors, come along weeth us and let me buy you a drink. My friend Pierre here, he has had a drink. We must guide him to the bar. We are friends are we not, m'sieur?"

I told him we were magnificent friends and arm in arm, with tall and silent Pierre in the middle, we climbed to the hotel balcony, found a small table, and ordered a big bottle of wine.

Pierre sat silently sipping the wine and gazing morosely into the distance.

"Qu'est-ce que vous vous appelez?" I said to Shorty, struggling to put my best French foot forward.

"Ah! M'sieur speeks français," Shorty said with enthusiasm. "Eh bien, nous parlerons en français, n'est-ce-pas? Je m'apelle Jean. Vous parlez français très bien, m'sieur." All this had come so fast I had to pause a minute to reconstruct it in my mind.

"Non, Jean," I said, and again with a great struggle, "Je pense que vous parlez anglais mieux que je parle français."

"Ah, we speak in English. It is perhaps easier, is it not, m'sieur? This is vary good wine, my friend." He paused for a moment. "French and Americans, we are vary great friends, are we not? It is as it should be. Our nations have always been friends. It is a friendship of the peoples. A very strong friendship, that, m'sieur. You in America, do you feel bad because France was beaten by the Germans?"

"Very."

"Do you dislike the French because the Germans could beat us?"

"Not at all. Ours is a strong friendship as you say, Jean."

"That is good. I have wondered about this very much and now I know. It is as it should be, is it not? Soon, with the help of your country and England and General Charles de Gaulle we shall free my country again." He sipped his wine pensively. His face suddenly brightened. "Look, my friend, I tell you what I shall do. I will give you my address and someday you will write to me. I get no mail at all so you will write to me, will you not? And when I get this letter I shall hold it like this--" his arms stretched out before him "--and say this is from my good American friend. And then I shall send you a big colored photograph of General Charles de Gaulle. Shall we not do this?"

I agreed and with an effort he began to spell out his address on a piece of paper. He wrote:

("That is Free French Ship Commandant Duboc," he explained.)

("And you must put this," he said, "so that the G.P.O. will know where to send your letter.")

("And if you want to find me in Cape Town, go to:")

I folded the paper and put it in my wallet. Tall Pierre, meanwhile, had slipped over onto the table and passed out.

"Look at our friend Pierre," said Jean. He shook Pierre by the arm. Pierre grunted. "I think our friend Pierre has had too much to drink today. We shall finish this bottle by ourselves, shall we not, m'sieur?"

Considering Pierre's present situation, I could not but agree.

"It is as it should be. This is very good wine, my friend."

If a feeling of camaraderie springs up among the soldiers and sailors from all over the world who meet in Cape Town, it is largely due to the atmosphere of welcome and friendliness created by the citizens of this city. That atmosphere was, to me, the one most impressive fact about Cape Town.

The political, economic, and social situation in the Union of South Africa is regulated, largely, by a triumvirate of peoples: the English, whose influence stems mainly from the fact that they control most of the Union's wealth and that they or their ancestors came from the island which is the center of the Empire of which South Africa is a dominion; the Dutch, or Boers, who, despite the Boer war, hold an official position equal to that of the English and who are still a unified group and must be reckoned with; and the Negros, most of them Bantus or Zulus, who are pushed under and held down by the English and Boers alike, and whose only offence and warrant for being unequally treated are their color, the fact that they outnumber the whites, and the fact that, like the American Indians, they happened to be there first. These Negros are subject to as strict a color bar as ever existed in the Southern United States.

The population ratio is 2,200,000 Whites to 8,200,000 Negros, mulattos, and Asiatics. The Negros who have left their tribes and have come to the cities to live and work are kept under careful government check and restriction. They must live in "locations" outside the city or town. Their chance for self-betterment is limited by the injunction against their performing skilled labor. At unskilled labor they cannot earn much over four dollars a week. Their personal life is also strictly governed by the permits they must obtain before they can look for work, work, live in a house or with a wife, go out at night, or leave the "location" at any time. They are not permitted to join the Dutch Reformed Church. For the privilege of electing three white men to the Senate and three to the Assembly they must pay a yearly poll tax of four dollars. If they refuse to pay it they may be whipped, jailed, or conscripted into the mines. The Negro who stay with their tribes on the 20,000,000 acres of reserves are poorer and see less of civilization, but they are happier and freer. On the whole, South Africa's Negros find less to eat and die at an earlier age than any other Negros in the world.

The ship's doctor aboard the Selandia a South African of Dutch descent who had been educated in England and on political questions generally held a very democratic viewpoint, was greatly offended and angered when three of the more liberal-minded members of our unit walked out of a lecture he gave us on South Africa when he asked us, as strangers visiting his country, to comply with the custom of South Africa and obey the color bar. His explanation of the situation, in which he drew close parallels to the attitude in the Southern United States, was that the Negro was unequal to the white man in education, willingness to be educated, and his ability to adopt successfully the cultures of civilization without going "bad." He pointed out that the Negros who were still back in the bush, still in the medium of their own form and stature of civilization were always "good" Negros. It was only when they came into the cities and had constant contact with the whiteman's way of life that they went "bad." The Negro, in his eyes, was in no position to be the political, economic, or social equal of the whites. And I believe the good doctor, typical of the South African Boer viewpoint, felt that the Negro should never be given a chance to "grow up" to a position in which equality might safely be bestowed upon him.

As a result of this extreme color bar, most Negros of the city who have had a chance to feel the persecution of such an attitude among the whites have developed a vicious dislike for the oppressors. If a white man were to wander alone at night into a dark alley in the colored section of the town, he would very likely be found the following morning with his throat slit. In the cities, as the doctor pointed out, the Negro goes bad."

The reverse situation is, of course, also true. The least most of the South African Whites would do if they saw a Negro address a white woman on the streets is have the Negro thrown into prison.

I asked one of the South African Negros in the Selandia's crew what he thought of the color bar in his country and he told me something I don't think he would have dared to say to a South African White. "They don't let us ride on the trains or streetcars with them, but they all want to sleep with our black women." The houses of prostitution in the colored section of Cape Town have an almost world-wide reputation.

Relations between the English and the Boers have reached an understanding on the surface, but there is still an undercurrent of friction. The Germans have tried to play on the pro-German feeling of many of the Boers in an attempt to widen the split with the English and---they have succeeded to some extent. By now, however, the great majority of the Boers are solidly with their English compatriots in the prosecution of the war. Their leader, Marshal Jan Smutts, is a very wise man and a fortunate choice to be leading the country. The Marshal has taken an active part in furthering the war effort and he has seen that his country has followed his example.

The government itself is careful to an extreme to see that equality exists between the English and the Boers. All public documents, stamps, government notices and bulletins are printed in English and Afrikaans, the near-Dutch language of the Boers. Two national anthems are sung. The parliament spends half of its time in Johannesburg and half in Pretoria. All government officials must be bi-lingual. Even cigarette packages, magazine advertisements, and theater posters are printed in both languages..

The country itself is rich agriculturally and minerally and the standard of living for the Whites is close to that in America. The southern coastal provinces have large areas of orchards and vineyards and are also heavily industrialized. The northern part of the Union holds tremendous mineral deposits. The mining effort has been almost exclusively centered around the gold deposits leaving the rich asbestos, chrome, copper, iron, manganese; tin, and vanadium ores nearly untouched. In 1942 the Transvaal coughed up almost 500,000,000 dollars worth of gold. Those in control of the gold interests literally run the country. Nearly the entire English press in South Africa, for instance, is controlled by the Gold Producer's Committee of the Chamber of Mines. Since the start of the war, the second mining industry, in importance---diamonds---has shut down except for production of those used in industry. In peacetime, South Africa used to turn out nearly 65% of the world's diamonds. Also in the northern part of the Union are scenic game preserves, and some big game hunting areas of interest to travellers. The cities in their shopping and white residential districts are beautiful and well arranged and the climate is excellent.

The living conditions for the Negros are very low. Whether they live in city or country village, their houses are usually mere shacks and shantys almost always surrounded by filth and poor sanitary conditions. I have seen government issued films showing improvements in education and general living conditions being given the Negros, but in the limited portion of the Cape Province I saw and from conversations I have had about this with South Africans, these improvements seem to be for the present on a very limited basis.

The Negros in the South African Army are very carefully picked. But any Negro who can join the army does so with relish for it raises his standard of living to undreamed-of heights. Even if he is only to build roads through the sweltering desert, he considers himself tremendously fortunate. He is assured good food, adequate clothing, pay, and a respected position in the eyes of his fellows. The South African Army has done a magnificent job in this war. Their fighting units, and particularly their air force, did a good share of the toughest fighting in the desert. campaign. Their Second Division captured Tobruk; their First Division made the breakthrough at Alamein. Arid if it had not been for the South African engineering corps, who repaired the roads, rebuilt the bridges, and handled a good part of the unloading and transportation of supplies, the desert war would have been a much more difficult proposition for General Montgomery.

But in South Africa itself, where rough diamonds and veins of gold cropped out of the earth as plentifully as the vegetation of its rich soil I found areas of squalid poverty and a strict persecution of the original people of the country. The Whites had a high and happy standard of living but the Negros lived among the ruins of themselves.

On Thursday morning, August 20, 1942, our unit marched from Camp Pollsmore to the little station called Retreat and there, with many Royal Airforcemen, we boarded a train and went to the docks of Cape Town. A great number of ships were in the harbor, some big liners, many smaller freighters. But nowhere did we see the Selandia. Its destination had been Durban, on the riviera of South Africa, and it had left Cape Town during our seven-day visit.

The pier to which we went held closely to its side one of the largest ships in the harbor. It was not until we had marched down underneath her nose and could read the painted-over letters of her name high above our heads that we found out we were to be sailing on the pride of the Holland-American line, the Nieuw Amsterdam.

Her wartime role as a troop transport had brought many changes to this magnificent luxury liner. All her former sparkling whiteness was now a drab gray. Her wide, covered decks were now filled with hammock racks. Her comfortable cabins were clogged with the wooden beams of many bunks. Her theater and some of her largest salons were filled with dormitory-like tiers of beds. Only the officers quarters and lounge and sun deck retained their pre-war aspect of luxury.

We were assigned to cabins which, in the original design, had been meant for two people. Now-eleven of us slept and lived in one cabin. Compared to the space and freedom of the Selandia we felt at first considerably cramped. But this was a troop ship in every sense of the word. Millions of Americans now know what life aboard such a ship is like.

At day-break the next morning, two tugs pulled her from her pier and the Nieuw Amsterdam sailed out to sea, leaving Cape Town snuggled at the base of Table Mountain and tucked around behind the Lion's Head.

Two days later, amid swarms of sea gulls, we sailed into Durban harbor. We spent two days there at a dock while more troops were loaded aboard. When we finally set out on the last leg of our journey to the Middle East, we had nearly 6,000 men aboard ship.

For eight days we sailed through the increasing warmth, the lovely sunsets, and magnificent bursts of sunrise of the Indian Ocean without sighting land. Then, on September second, after we had entered the Gulf of Aden, we could see far to our starboard the rugged, mountainous horizon of the coast of southern Arabia. We were entering the Red Sea.

The Red Sea for us was appropriately named. The water itself wasn't particularly reddish, but the humidity and temperature were! During the day the temperature reached 110 degrees in the shade and nights brought little respite. In theory at least, the Japanese and Germans had submarines in these waters and as we neared the northern part of the Red Sea we came within bomber range of German air bases behind the Alamein line. As a result a strict blackout was maintained. This meant no portholes could be opened when we stripped off our, few clothes and lay sweating on our bunks at night, trying to snatch some sleep in our overcrowded cabins. Every ventilator and electric fan was working full tilt.

In the evenings, Bob Pearmain, Alex Parker, Jim Atkins and I would gather in the officers' lounge (which as civilians we were given the generous privilege of using), sip iced drinks, let the sweat roll freely down our bodies, and try to play a half-hearted game of bridge. When the nights became so hot it was impossible to sleep in the cabins, most of us rolled up in a blanket on the sun deck where whatever breeze there was from the motion of the ship would make the nights bearable.

The last nights in the Red Sea were flooded by a brilliant September moon. The Nieuw Amsterdam slowed down to just enough speed to keep headway and as a result rolled considerably. Some nights the moon was so brilliant Jim Atkins and I could play table tennis on the upper deck. The roiling of the ship had a more detrimental effect on the skill of our game than did the lack of sufficient light. On the last day of our Red Sea voyage, the Nieuw Amsterdam had the accelerator on the floor-boards. It steamed full speed across the remaining distance to Toufik, the shipping port of Suez, quickly unloaded, and sailed away again. German bombing raids on this port made it an unhealthy berth for any such valuable ship as this giant troop carrier.

Suez, the city of fable, story and verse, where East meets West (if ever the twain do meet), was whisked out from under our noses almost immediately. We were loaded into trucks, taken-briskly from the docks of Toufik through the edge of the city, and speeded on our first trip through the desert wastes of Egypt that border the Suez Canal. The canal is as near the middle of the Middle East as you can get. It is the vital part of the British imperial life line and the goal of the Afrika Korps which came so close to taking it.

As we sped along the rather bumpy tar road northward, we could see this all-important strip of water which had had such a turbulent history, which in peacetime for Far East bound ships eliminated the circumnavigation of the African continent, and which was now being defended in a last ditch stand by the desert-weary Eighth army. It was a very important bit of water. And it seemed to realize its own importance and in all its mildly sparkling blueness to stand apart from the rolling white worthless sand at its elbows. Intrepid freighters were slipping lightly along its smoothness toward Port Said and Alexandria to unload the ever necessary supplies for the desert war.

We stood rimming the edges of our hurrying trucks. Our eyes were being opened and filled with the new wonders of this strange land into which we had been dropped. On our right was the Suez Canal. In the distance to our left rose a rugged, barren escarpment. The white-washed sand and a few oases of fig palms in a continual panorama unrolled before us and then faded into the distance behind. We passed Arabs walking along the road, a new people to us, and their sandalled or bare feet, their long flowing robes, their turbaned heads denoted a new way of life which we were to see and know for so long. An almost unbreathabiy hot wind seared our faces.

Our bumping trucks took us northward and west into the vast British military camp called El Tahag. This camp was nothing but heat, flies, sand, high water towers of cement, and E.P.I.P. (English Patent Indian Product) tents. It is a rigorous but militarily sound introduction to the desert for troops who have to live and fight a desert war. The Germans, under the direction of Erwin Rornmel and with their habitually extensive thoroughness, spent long months, unstinted effort, and many Marks to make hot-house desert conditions in which to harden and acclimatize the Afrika Korps; the British merely picked the most God-forsaken part of Egypt, put up some tents, and sent their soldiers there before the desert. If you could learn to live comfortably in Tahag, the desert was a cinch.

El Tahag was the scene of our short training program before we went to work as an ambulance car company. We were assigned new American army-type Dodge ambulances and taught to maintain them; we were given lectures on navigating by sun and prismatic compasses, on living conditions in the desert, on the British army medical system, and on the progress of the war; and we were taken on an over-night practice desert convoy in which each one of us took turns navigating and driving through sand at the head of the long line of cars. The whole training program was ended with an inspection of us and our cars by jovial and friendly British Brigadier Walker, Deputy Director of Medical Services in the Middle East

During our fourteen days of training, we were given two periods of leave in Cairo and the delta area. I spent one of these in basic sightseeing and the other as the guest of Chester Morrison who was then writing and broadcasting from Cairo. With him I had a long discussion from which I learned much about Egypt and the war. Our first active assignment after our stay at Tahag was a 200-mile round-trip from Kilo. 121 on the Cairo-Alexandria road back to the small city of Helhuan up the Nile from Cairo evacuating a Casualty Clearing Station (CCS) to a base hospital. Frequently we made the shorter trip to a hospital in Alexandria.

After the German surrender near Tunis at the close of the African war, I again spent much time in Egypt. From all of these experiences I have gained a fairly sound picture of Egypt as it stands today and as it stood when the war had crossed its threshold and was pounding on the door of its living room---the Valley of the Nile.

And that living room, that narrow strip of fertility running south from Alexandria is a badly overcrowded and overcultivated area populated almost entirely outside the cities by Arabs. The result of this congestion is, of course, extreme poverty, rampant disease, and almost barbaric methods of agriculture.

Travel books and tourist posters paint as quaint the picture of Arab women pulling wooden plows along the banks of the Nile. It is far from quaint. It is pathetic. For if you examined this scene closely enough, seven chances out of nine, you would find the woman toothless, blind in at least one eye, syphilitic, and on the verge of pellegra from lack of proper nourishment.

The Arabs can usually afford nothing but their daily diet of black bread and beans. If you could look beyond this "picturesque" tourist poster, you would find her husband fast asleep in the shade of some building and her children naked, relieving themselves in the shade of their one-room mud hut, paying no attention to the thirty or so flies that line the rims of both their eyes like suckling pigs. Nearby, the eldest daughter would be drawing drinking water from an irrigation ditch used by everyone around as bathroom and laundry. That picture of the agrarian residents of the fringes of the Nile is more realistic than it is attractive or "picturesque."

Home life among the Egyptian Arabs of this fellahin class (and there are few Arabs who are not of this class) is utterly miserable. The fellahin who work earn an average wage of thirty cents a day. Homosexuality is widely practiced among male Arabs because they usually are too poor to pay the price demanded for the women they want to make their wives. Women are more valuable than most of the other livestock because women can do the heavy work of the primitive methods of agriculture, can give them pleasure in the, bed, can bear them sons to make them wealthy and daughters to aid in the manual labor or to sell in marriage. Camels and donkeys are valuable, but few can do all this. If, perchance, an Arab should have a prize horse or camel, he treats it with infinite respect and care. But the other livestock (including the women) he treats with a cruelty that, to watch, makes you shudder.

The Egyptians who are wealthy (and when they're wealthy, they're very wealthy) are those few who own large tracts of land cultivated by cheap Arab labor, who own buildings in the cities and rent them to Europeans, or who run the industrial side of the country ---a small but money-making proposition in Egyptian economics. Most of the actual business in metropolitan Egypt is handled by Greeks, French, and a few English.

Considering the high illiteracy and the vast discrepancy between the few very wealthy and the many very poor, the Egyptian government is about what you would expect it to be. The Parliament is made up largely of the wealthy and influential Egyptians and only a few of them, too few to do much good, are social-reform minded. King Farouk is the figurehead of the wealthy. He has a beautiful queen (with whom he seldom associates) and magnificent palaces and yachts. He is surrounded by the rich exploiters of his country and his people and he in turn protects them.

The King's sentiments were strongly pro-Axis at the time the African war was see-sawing back and forth across Libya in the early days of the war. But after an exciting and well hushed-up skirmish, the King changed his ideas. His original Prime Minister held an equally favorable view of the Axis and he and the King were found to be supplying information to the enemy concerning ship movements in Egyptian waters. When this was discovered, the King tried to escape to Europe in his yacht, but was caught and brought back. The British Minister to Egypt then asked for an audience with King Farouk to discuss the matter of a new Prime Minister. The King locked himself in his palace and the audience was refused. The British, in no mood to play games over such a matter, called up an armed force and surrounded the palace. The King called in the Egyptian army which in turn surrounded the palace and the armed force. The British then called in a good-sized body of troops, cowed the Egyptian army, drove an armored car through the palace gates into the courtyard, and, perforce, were given an audience with the King. The Minister thereupon named a pro-British Egyptian the new Prime Minister and King Farouk began to cooperate with the British and the Allied war effort in general. The Egyptian army, however, still did nothing but sit in its barracks and post guards on the royal yachts and palaces. The country remained indifferent to the North African war and said it would not fight alongside the British unless Egypt were actually invaded. While the war was still being fought in Libya, they bravely posted their fighting force on the Egypt-Libya border.

Then, when the Germans and Italians pushed into Egypt, the Egyptian army hastily removed itself to the Nile delta and didn't even go on maneuvers. The British don't need, us, they said, as the Axis armies punched their way through to Alamein, only 70 miles from Alexandria, and the British army faced the most critical period in the North African war.

This was Egypt. Meeting place of the East and the West. The site of the birth of civilization. Had I thought of the vast omnipresent fertility of the Nile bringing the fullness of life to its Moslem peoples? Yes, I had, but that was before I had seen more of Egypt than tourist posters and travel books. There were ruins in Egypt, ruins of a former high civilization. But it was not the pyramids, not the Sphinx, not the lone pillar standing in the sand that impressed me. It was the slow crumbling of the people existing there and nothing more. The slow crumbling into living ruins.