Into The Darkness

All Europe is under the shadow of war. It is like an eclipse of the
sun. In the warring nations the darkness is most intense, amounting to
a continuous blackout. The neutral countries form a sort of twilight
zone, where life is better, yet far from normal.

In nature, an eclipse is a passing phenomenon; awe-inspiring but soon
over. Not so with the war-hidden sun of Europe's civilization. Normal
light and warmth do not return. Ominously, the twilight zone of
neutrality becomes an ever-bleaker gray, while war's blackout grows
more and more intense.

I entered wartime Europe by way of Italy, making the trip from America
on the Italian liner Rex. It was a strange voyage. This huge floating
palace, the pride of Italy's merchant marine, carried only a handful
of passengers. War's automatic blight on pleasure tours, plus our
State Department's ban on ordinary passports, had dammed the travel
flood to the merest trickle. So I sailed from New York on an almost
empty boat.

First Class on the _Rex_ is a miracle of modern luxury. Yet all that
splendor was lavished upon precisely twenty-five passengers including
myself. Consequently we rattled around in this magnificence like tiny
peas in a mammoth pod. A small group of tables in one corner of the
spacious dining salon; a short row of reclining-chairs on the long
vista of the promenade deck; a pathetic little cluster of seats in the
vast ballroom when it was time for the movies--these were the sole
evidences of community life. Even the ship's company was little in
evidence. Save for the few stewards and deck-hands needed to look
after us, the rest did not appear. Now and then I would roam about for
a long time without seeing a soul. The effect was eery. It was like
being on a ghost ship, "Outward Bound" and driven by unseen hands.

There was not much to be gleaned from my fellow-passengers. Most of
them were Italians, speaking little English and full of their own
affairs. A pair of American business men were equally preoccupied. For
them, the war was a confounded nuisance. The rapid-fire speech of a
Chilean diplomat bound with his family for a European post was too
much for my Spanish. The most intriguing person aboard was a lone
Japanese who beat everybody at ping-pong but otherwise held himself
aloof.

Back aft, Tourist Class was even more cosmopolitan, with a solitary
American set among a sprinkling of several nationalities, including a
young Iraki Arab returning to Bagdad from a course at the University
of Chicago. He was a fiery nationalist deeply distrustful of all the
European Powers, especially Soviet Russia with its possible designs on
the Middle East. In both Tourist and Third Class were a number of
Germans, mostly women but three of them men of military age. All were
obviously nervous. They had taken the gamble that the _Rex_ would not
be stopped by the English at Gibraltar, Britain's key to the
Mediterranean. In that event, the men knew that a concentration camp
would be the end of their venturesome attempt to return to the
Fatherland.