Douglas, Marjory Stoneman "Athens to Marseilles."

Yes, those dates are correct – Ms. Douglas really lived to the ripe old age of 108! This unsettling tale set is aboard a wretched little steamship (“an Amazon River steamer brought over to run troops to Gallipoli”) pressed into a Mediterranean run from Greece to France. The Saturday Evening Post’s “[Coming] Next Week” blurb of Aug. 27, 1938 neatly sums up Douglas’ short story: “Have you ever wondered what strange pattern of circumstances changed a housepainter into a Hitler, a journalist into a Mussolini – or a Maurice Marks into Marko, the Dictator. We invite you aboard a battered little steamer to witness, during a storm at sea, the moment that made a talkative little man into a nation’s prophet and leader.” Though Douglas’ descriptions of shipboard life aboard a third rate passenger vessel are well drawn, her extremely sympathetic portrayal of a would-be fascist leader is disquieting to an extreme. This is the type of 1930s story that could have only been written well before Sept. 1, 1939.