"One War at a Time"

In November 1861, when the U. S. Civil War was just getting going. Captain Charles Wilkes of the Union Navy, commanding the screw sloop San Jacinto, fired a shot across the bows of the British Royal Mail packet Trent as she steamed along the Bahama Channel. The Trent hove to and, under the San Jacinto's guns, surrendered to a U. S. boarding party the persons of James Murray Mason and John Slidell, commissioners on their way to represent the Confederacy in Great Britain and France, respectively.

Queen Victoria's Government (Prime Minister: Lord Palmerston) was so incensed that, besides a hot note to President Abraham Lincoln in Washington, it sent 8,000 picked troops to Canada, got its Navy ready. England raged and ranted about dismembering the upstart Republic. New York City feted Captain Wilkes and Northern hotheads boasted that the Union would give Britain some of the medicine it was about to give the South. Abraham Lincoln kept mum, for weeks. Eventually he had Secretary of State Seward discover that, while Captain Wilkes was within international law in arresting the Trent, he went beyond it in removing its passengers without taking the ship and them before a prize court. Messrs. Mason & Slidell were released from jail in Boston, placed on a British man-o'-war which carried them triumphantly abroad. Abuse was heaped high on Lincoln's head by many of his countrymen, but he patiently stuck to his private explanation of the affair: "One war at a time."

Last month an anonymous British cruiser fired across the bows of the Japanese liner Asama Maru, only 35 miles off Japan's naval base of Yokosuka. From the Asama Maru a British boarding party took 21 Germans, judged to be of military age and ability, returning from U. S. employment via Japan and Siberia to Germany (TIME, Jan. 29). These the British interned at Hong Kong. Japan fumed. Great Britain cited her rights under a convention of 1909 (never ratified) which says that persons liable to military service for an enemy may be removed by a belligerent from neutral ships. But last week Britain backed down to the extent of offering to hand back to Japan nine of the 21 Nazis. Her basic reasons for this were: 1) to save Japanese "face"; 2) "One war at a time." This gesture was met by Japan (which also has one war already on her hands) with an order forbidding Japanese ships to carry military-age citizens of belligerent countries.

Interesting to the world as a high-policy byplay, this Asama Maru incident was fascinating to the 512 former crew members of the scuttled German liner Columbus, who, last week, were still dawdling deliciously on San Francisco's Angel Island: exercising, playing games, eating three bulky U. S. meals per day, fishing for pogies & perch off Angel Island stringers and smoking the catch for 'tween-meal tidbits, going to one movie a week as guests of the U. S. Army across the island at Fort McDowell. Now that they might not travel in Japanese ships, as planned, the Columbus' crew's stay appeared extended indefinitely, though Madam Secretary of Labor Perkins said she was "cooperating in every way" to send them home. Chances are they will be sent in batches to Central and South American ports, whence many an able-bodied Nazi (including twelve pilots of Scadta Airlines in Colombia) has been successfully smuggled past Britain's Pacific patrols. Lest any of the Columbus' men jump the gun, their shore-leave privilege was discontinued last week.

Less fortunate than the Columbus' crew, for the moment, are crews of Nazi ships still stewing in Brazilian, Ecuadorian and other tropical ports. Last week three German ships made a run for it from Brazil and eleven interned officers and men of the scuttleship Admiral Graf Spee disappeared from Montevideo. Still at Curac,ao and Aruba in The Netherlands West Indies last week were a dozen vessels whose lot was particularly hard because the Dutch, gloomily expecting an attack on their homeland, are ill-disposed toward Nazis, are also afraid they might by way of sabotage set fire to the enormous quantities of oil stored in the islands by Royal Dutch Co. Nazi ships at Curac,ao are now forced to anchor outside Willemstad's drawbridged harbor, at remote bays around the island. In the tropical climate, with next to nothing to do, the men's morale has rotted. Food is poor and scanty, water precious. Crews with edible cargoes have eaten them (one ship had nothing but oranges and lemons). The men receive eight guilders ($4.24) per month to spend on shore, plus 20 paper marks good aboard ship (for barber, laundry, etc.). The one man ashore in Curac,ao who might help them, German Consul Fensohn, is 98.

Dissent among officers, as to whether they ought to steam out, be captured and get the thing over with, makes some of the ships angry nests of intrigue. When one captain fell ill, a subordinate begged the ship's doctor to dope him so they could head home. While another captain was ashore, the first officer ordered the engines started, but the first engineer stalled for time until the captain returned. With patrolling British warships frequently in plain sight offshore, escape looks hopeless.

German seamen aboard ships laid up in Costa Rica received last month one moderately good break. At the request of the German Minister there, the Government ruled that Nazis might go ashore into the interior, settle down.

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