To the Offensive?

The news piled up:

> Observers on the Spanish coast, opposite Gibraltar, reported the assemblage at the Rock of a mighty fleet--three battleships, four aircraft carriers, four cruisers, 24 destroyers, twelve "scout ships," six submarines.

> A big British convoy fought its way through the western Mediterranean (see col. 2).

> A squadron of the Royal Navy, in a risky but successful action, drew up before the Italian island of Rhodes (off Asia Minor) and gave it a twelve-minute shelling.

> At Pylos in the Aegean Sea, U.S. airmen from Egypt bombed Italian warships, hit several cruisers.

> Cairo correspondents prepared their editors at home for major news to come.

To what, if anything, did these isolated intimations add up? With Rommel preparing to battle General Auchinleck for the possession of endangered Egypt and the Suez Canal, with German forces concentrated in Greece, in Crete and in Aegean islands, it looked very much as though the United Nations were preparing to force a showdown in the Mediterranean.

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