National Affairs: Pink Star Down

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This week Adolf Hitler took up Franklin Roosevelt's challenge. President Roosevelt had declared the North Atlantic around Iceland "defensive waters." The President had announced that U.S. war ships would protect all shipping in those waters, shoot on sight any Nazi or Italian raider brash enough to invade them. The President had said: "When you see a rattlesnake poised to strike . . . you crush him."

Yet, in defiance, the rattlesnake struck. To Washington came the news that the 6,850-ton Pink Star, owned by the U.S. Government, flying the flag of Panama, had been sunk off Iceland in the same waters where a Nazi submarine had tried to torpedo the destroyer Greer and a raider had sent the merchantman Sessa to the bottom.

It still remained to be seen what the U.S. would do by way of rattlesnake control.