Maps on the Menu

If an Allied saboteur in danger of capture by the enemy swallowed hard, it was not necessarily fear--he was probably destroying the evidence. Maps on tissue-thin paper, which could be eaten if need be, were among the curiosa of World War II, publicly shown for the first time in New York last week.

The Army alone made 480,000,000 maps during the war; the Navy and the Aeronautical Chart Service lost count. Inedible, but no less valuable, were huge rubber relief maps of enemy territory which could be rolled up like a rug. For castaways on life rafts: charts on rubberized cloth. For flyers over "the Hump": a cloth map with a request for aid printed on it in Chinese, Burmese, Lisu, Kachin, Hindustani, Bengali--and English.

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