Rivers Open

Ice jams in the gorges of the Danube broke up last fortnight and floated down toward the Black Sea. Last week upriver traffic started, and among the first to move were 30 barges carrying 18,000 tons of Rumanian oil to Germany--about one-seventh of that blockaded country's monthly oil quota from Europe's prime economic battleground.

British agents having bought up or leased all the loose Danube tanker barges in sight, Nazis were relieved last week when Yugoslavia--through which the Danube winds for some 200 miles--released seven big German oil barges which had been held for special transit permits.

Sixteen other German barges were still held, with five Hungarian ones, two belonging to Socony-Vacuum. The Yugoslav permits are a new clog in Germany's supply line wherein the fine hand of British diplomacy may or may not be seen. Should Germany decide to impose her own control of through traffic on the Danube, fireworks might well follow in the Balkans.

As fuel for the carburetors of Germany started up the Danube, muscle for the police of Rumania passed down the Rhone. Three motor torpedo boats of the swift (47-knot) type which Great Britain has built by the dozen for service in the Channel, the Mediterranean and perhaps the Baltic, were sold by Britain to Rumania this winter. When ice left the rivers of France, up the Seine right through Paris snored these swift and lethal little craft. Turning out of the Seine into the Yonne just below Montereau it is possible to navigate that stream to the Armanc,on, continue by canal south to Dijon, thence by another canal into the Saone, which flows into the broad, Alp-born Rhone, which enters the Mediterranean just west of Marseille, thus cutting off a long, rough trip around Spain. From photographs taken from a bridge in Paris, the British sea wasps for Rumania looked like 70-ft. Vospers, each mounting two 21-inch torpedo tubes, powered with three 1,150-h.p. motors and two auxiliary engines for sneak-up work at nine knots. The boats were described as intended for patrol duty in the Black Sea, but if trouble arises on the oil-bearing Danube, there too they might serve.

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