Alongside her dock in the sun-baked harbor of Alexandria one day last week lay American Export Lines' S. S. Excalibur, loading to the rattle of donkey engines and the babble of Levantine tongues. Day before, as the Excalibur docked, three days out of Naples, Italy had declared war, and the whole Mediterranean Sea had become a war zone barred by the neutrality laws to U. S. ships. Ahead of grim-faced Skipper Samuel Norman Groves lay stops at Tel Aviv, Haifa and Beirut, a run through the eastern islands to Piraeus, second calls...
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