Whoever Dun It. . .

Through the night, the nitrate-laden Mapocho labored up the Chilean coast. The ship's bell tolled once--half-past midnight. Suddenly, explosions in the hold bounced the dinky, 63-year-old ship about. Flames burst above deck, firing lifeboats before they could be launched. The trapped crew and passengers scrambled for their lives. In half an hour the Mapocho went down, taking at least 83 people with her.

The Mapocho disaster underlined anew the old superstition that disasters run in cycles of three. Two other Chilean ships had been plagued by mysterious fires in recent weeks. In Valparaiso, stevedores loading the merchantman Naguilan had discovered a suspicious blaze in the ship's hold. Off the Peruvian coast, the square-rigged Lautaro, one of the world's largest sailing vessels and pride of the Chilean navy, exploded and sank with another cargo of war-scarce nitrate; 19 midshipmen burned to death or drowned.

Chilean officials, putting fire and fire together, promptly shouted, "Sabotage!" Newspapers, with next to no justification, blamed it on the minuscule (300) and well-guarded Japanese colony. The police put 20 Germans under preventive arrest. Chipping in their two cents' worth, the Argentines--who are far more worried about Communists than Germans and Japs--contributed a complicated suspicion: before leaving port, the assistant butcher of the Mapocho had been told by his boss that the ship was doomed to destruction; since the boss was known to be a Communist, it was no doubt a dark Red plot.

Since the Chileans were still running Chile, the Communist theory got nowhere. But public resentment toward Germany and Japan might prove a big help to President Juan Antonio Rios. His recent declaration of a state of belligerency against the Axis comes before Chile's obstreperous Congress next week.

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