Medal

The dusky, lustrous eyes of Roman citizens grew large and moist with awe, last week, when a Papal medal as big as a smallish soup plate was borne pompously across the "Eternal City."

He for whom the medal had been cast was no happy man. Pain twitched his broken leg. Enemies were reviling him as, "That Coward Nobile! The first airship captain who was first to leave his ship!" (TIME, July 23.)

Such lashing words must have cut deeper than pain; but suddenly their sting was soothed, as the great, soup-plate-like medal arrived and was placed in the trembly hands of General Umberto Nobile. Immediately his careworn features relaxed, and he seemed to bask at length in Peace.

Protestants might scoff, or heretics sneer. The slant eyelids of infidels might even lower in sedate winks. But General Umberto Nobile clung to the medal as tangible proof that his pious deed of dropping a large Papal cross on the North Pole (TIME, June 4) has found highest favor in the eyes of the Most Blessed Father and Supreme Pontiff, Achille Ambrogio Damiano Ratti, Pope Pius XI. Enthusiastic, His Holiness sent along with the medal his "warmest congratulations," and finally imparted a solemn Papal blessing.

Said the grateful and pious Nobile: "Part of our motion picture film was lost. We had to burn it in an effort to keep warm. But we spared the footage showing me in the act of dropping emblems* upon the North Pole."

Blessed and congratulated, General Nobile eventually told correspondents that he carries in his head a number never known to man, a number which may prove to be the crowning achievement of his expedition, a number which he described as "the horizontal component of the magnetic field."

A short time before the Nobile dirigible Italia plunged to destruction the "magnetic component" was worked out by Professor Aldo Pontremoli, who is now missing on the Polar ice. "He came toward me radiant with joy," said General Nobile, "crying that he had finished the calculation at last. He told me the figure, which, fortunately, I can still remember. Whoever is acquainted with these scientific problems will realize the immense value of this discovery."

* Beside the Cross there were dropped the flags of Italy and Milan (Nobile's native city).