Humanitarian Parenthesis

On the martial Mediterranean last week, strangely pacific ships were afloat. From fig-famed Smyrna on the Turkish coast, the British Llandovery Castle, brightly lighted, sailed for Egypt. In the same harbor the Italian Grandisca got up steam to sail for Italy. Into Gibraltar, unscathed, sailed the Italian Saturnia and Vulcania, sparkling with fresh white paint.

In a humanitarian parenthesis amid the thundering oratory of warships' guns, the British and Italians were exchanging wounded, repatriating noncombatants. This was the first successful prisoner exchange in the war: the British and Germans had tried (TIME, Oct. 13), but their swap had failed when Germany insisted on making the exchange strictly man for man. (By the Geneva Convention of 1929, belligerents are required to return home seriously wounded prisoners, regardless of man-for-man exchange.) Italy knew better than to make such a demand-she was to get back more prisoners than she gave up. Off to Alexandria sailed 66 stricken British soldiers, 63 medical personnel captured in Greece; to Italy went 250 sick and wounded Italians captured in Ethiopia and East Africa.

The Vulcania-Saturnia mission was larger-scale and generously unilateral. No less than 11,000 Italian civilians-men incapable of military service, women & children-marooned in East Africa when Allied troops brought Mussolini's imperial dream crashing down, were to be repatriated gradually from coastal camps. Notable was the fact that the Italian ships were headed round Africa's Cape of Good Hope.

Evidently prudent Britain was risking no transit by enemy ships, Red Cross or no Red Cross.

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