Thunder rumbled over the Mediterranean one day last week. The British-French Mediterranean fleet ploughed eastward to a rendezvous at Alexandria, Egypt. Lighter craft of the Italian. Turkish and British Navies played hide & seek among the islands of the Aegean. And in London the Admiralty announced that the Mediterranean was closed to British merchant ships—they should forsake the strait at Gibraltar and go the long way to the Orient round Cape of Good Hope (see P. 30).
Within one hour of this announcement, Franklin Roosevelt instructed lanky, prim William Phillips, U. S....