{"product_id":"2940013773707","title":"Into The Darkness","description":"All Europe is under the shadow of war. It is like an eclipse of the\u003cbr\u003esun. In the warring nations the darkness is most intense, amounting to\u003cbr\u003ea continuous blackout.  The neutral countries form a sort of twilight\u003cbr\u003ezone, where life is better, yet far from normal.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIn nature, an eclipse is a passing phenomenon; awe-inspiring but soon\u003cbr\u003eover. Not so with the war-hidden sun of Europe's civilization. Normal\u003cbr\u003elight and warmth do not return. Ominously, the twilight zone of\u003cbr\u003eneutrality becomes an ever-bleaker gray, while war's blackout grows\u003cbr\u003emore and more intense.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eI entered wartime Europe by way of Italy, making the trip from America\u003cbr\u003eon the Italian liner Rex. It was a strange voyage. This huge floating\u003cbr\u003epalace, the pride of Italy's merchant marine, carried only a handful\u003cbr\u003eof passengers. War's automatic blight on pleasure tours, plus our\u003cbr\u003eState Department's ban on ordinary passports, had dammed the travel\u003cbr\u003eflood to the merest trickle. So I sailed from New York on an almost\u003cbr\u003eempty boat.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eFirst Class on the _Rex_ is a miracle of modern luxury.  Yet all that\u003cbr\u003esplendor was lavished upon precisely twenty-five passengers including\u003cbr\u003emyself. Consequently we rattled around in this magnificence like tiny\u003cbr\u003epeas in a mammoth pod. A small group of tables in one corner of the\u003cbr\u003espacious dining salon; a short row of reclining-chairs on the long\u003cbr\u003evista of the promenade deck; a pathetic little cluster of seats in the\u003cbr\u003evast ballroom when it was time for the movies--these were the sole\u003cbr\u003eevidences of community life. Even the ship's company was little in\u003cbr\u003eevidence. Save for the few stewards and deck-hands needed to look\u003cbr\u003eafter us, the rest did not appear. Now and then I would roam about for\u003cbr\u003ea long time without seeing a soul. The effect was eery. It was like\u003cbr\u003ebeing on a ghost ship, \"Outward Bound\" and driven by unseen hands.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThere was not much to be gleaned from my fellow-passengers.  Most of\u003cbr\u003ethem were Italians, speaking little English and full of their own\u003cbr\u003eaffairs. A pair of American business men were equally preoccupied. For\u003cbr\u003ethem, the war was a confounded nuisance. The rapid-fire speech of a\u003cbr\u003eChilean diplomat bound with his family for a European post was too\u003cbr\u003emuch for my Spanish. The most intriguing person aboard was a lone\u003cbr\u003eJapanese who beat everybody at ping-pong but otherwise held himself\u003cbr\u003ealoof.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBack aft, Tourist Class was even more cosmopolitan, with a solitary\u003cbr\u003eAmerican set among a sprinkling of several nationalities, including a\u003cbr\u003eyoung Iraki Arab returning to Bagdad from a course at the University\u003cbr\u003eof Chicago. He was a fiery nationalist deeply distrustful of all the\u003cbr\u003eEuropean Powers, especially Soviet Russia with its possible designs on\u003cbr\u003ethe Middle East. In both Tourist and Third Class were a number of\u003cbr\u003eGermans, mostly women but three of them men of military age.  All were\u003cbr\u003eobviously nervous. They had taken the gamble that the _Rex_ would not\u003cbr\u003ebe stopped by the English at Gibraltar, Britain's key to the\u003cbr\u003eMediterranean. In that event, the men knew that a concentration camp\u003cbr\u003ewould be the end of their venturesome attempt to return to the\u003cbr\u003eFatherland.","brand":"WDS Publishing","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47083312218352,"sku":"2940013773707","price":2.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0737\/7593\/9824\/files\/2940013773707_p0.jpg?v=1763590066","url":"https:\/\/shop-qa.barnesandnoble.com\/products\/2940013773707","provider":"Barnes \u0026 Noble (DEV)","version":"1.0","type":"link"}