Umberto's Return

A silvery blimp dipped. A Roman rabble surged and roared. Four plumed steeds cavorted proudly, their path cleared by resplendent policemen. At the Palazzo Chigi out of a triumphal oldtime open coach, stepped General of the Air Umberto Nobile (TIME, Aug. 2, SCIENCE), to be saluted and embraced in person by his swart Excellency, Benito Mussolini. Shortly, master and man appeared on the Chigi balcony, where Mussolini's jowls became suffused with blood, his muscular throat thick with emotion.

"In vain," shouted the master of Italy, "did others try to steal the glory. ... I want to say in a voice of thunder that, Italy, it was you who were responsible for this glory!" He wished to recognize "with Roman justice" the merit of Nobile and his men, because "you, an Italian, planned the ship; you, an Italian, with other Italians, built it; and you, an Italian, with other Italians, wisely guided it to the end of the extraordinary voyage."

Mussolini, an Italian, declared last May 18, that the passage over the North Pole by the airship Norge was "an enterprise which could have been conceived and carried out only by superior beings," among whom, at that time, Mussolini deemed worthy of inclusion in his "fervent and heartfelt" congratulations Nobile's employers, Explorer Roald Amundsen, the brains; Explorer Lincoln Ellsworth, the moneybags.

Not all of Italy loves Nobile. Despatches from Rome declared that unpatriotic peasants blamed him for disastrous crop weather, believing that the Norge's propellers "scrambled the air currents" crossing the world.