Strange Flags in the Caribbean

Up to the coast of the Caribbean island of Aruba, fringed with coral, into its deep port fringed with oil-storage tanks, moved two startling apparitions last week. Their shape was familiar, for Aruba has seen many a tanker. But the flags painted on their sides and flying at the poop were, of all flags, Italian.

What were Italian ships doing picking up Allied oil in The Netherlands West Indies? The answer was as unusual as the sight.

With the approval of the Italian Government -- and therefore probably of the German as well -- the two ships had come, manned by Italians but officered by Britons and under armed guard, to pick up oil, to be carried to Djibouti on the Gulf of Aden to fuel ships to carry Italian prisoners from Ethiopia on at least the first leg of their trip to Italy. The British say that it is necessary to get white Italians out of Ethiopia as fast as possible --"to avoid mutilation."

As evidence of the good faith of the prisoner exchange, a shipload of nearly 800 British prisoners from Italy arrived last week in Turkey, weary after months of imprisonment, glad to be free but, above all, hungry. When the Italian tankers get back from The Netherlands West Indies, ships full of Italians will get home, weary, glad and about to be hungry.

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