By the Sea

All around the wintry blue Mediterranean the Allied victories in Africa were paying off politically:

>In Ankara's famed Karpich Restaurant Turkish Premier Suekrue Saracoglu ("Sarah" to Allied newsmen) linked arms at the bar with British Ambassador Sir Hughe Montgomery Knatchbull-Hugessen ("Snatch"). They strolled to Sarah's table for a tete-`a-tete that was unprecedented because it was public. The fascinated crowds then saw them steal two young women from a table of young British and U.S. diplomats and whirl happily and jovially around the dance floor.

Next morning the happy secret of Sarah and Snatch was out: the U.S. invasion of North Africa. Turkey hoped, through Allied control of the Mediterranean, for a direct route for British-U.S. Lend-Lease supplies. Turkish-Soviet relations improved at once: Soviet Ambassador Sergei Vinogradov flew back to Turkey after a cool absence of four months.

> In Athens students demonstrated jubilantly, and there was so much popular unrest in Crete that the Nazi conquerors got out their machine guns.

> In Italy, the world's most pompous puppet show, an official radio broadcast warned that "to tremble in public is a crime against the community and the country."

>With Adolf Hitler's Panzers already grimly sunning themselves on the French Riviera, Spain and Portugal faced difficult moments. Last week they were all diplomatic smiles toward the U.S. Replying to President Roosevelt's assurances that the United Nations had no designs on their territory, Spain's Dictator Francisco Franco said he would avoid "anything which might disturb our relations in any of their aspects," and Portugal's President Antonio Oscar de Fragoso Carmona spoke of "unalterable and confident friendship."

With the Allies in Africa and the Nazis in France, Spain and Portugal may have to maneuver smartly to keep from becoming a nut in a nutcracker. One factor may keep Dictator Franco from cooperating with the Nazis, no matter what pressure Hitler applies: the temper of masses of Spaniards who like neither Hitler nor Franco.

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