Monday, Aug. 10, 1925

Home

Smiling quizzically, speaking softly, deprecating demonstration, Air Pilot Lincoln Ellsworth, sole American to accompany Explorer Amundsen of Norway on his dash from Spitsbergen to the North Pole (TIME, June 1 et seq.), trod again his home shores last week. His footnotes to the story of the flight that stuck in icy hummocks 157 miles from the goal:

"Amundsen kept repeating over and over: 'When it's darkest there's always light'."

"No, we never could have walked back to safety. We wouldn't have lasted 50 miles."

"Next time we go we'll have a radio set . . . an absolute necessity."

"It wouldn't be advisable to hop off from this country--the journey would be too great."

"The advantage of survey of the Pole will not be in exploitation of anything there, but in developing an air route to Europe."

Mr. Ellsworth and his late father contributed virtually all of the $150,000 that the flight cost. Concerning lectures to make up that expense, he said: "Certainly there will be lectures--and the profits will be put right back into the next venture!"

Six thousand feet of moving picture films were taken. "They turned out splendidly."

In October, Ellsworth will meet his chief at a U. S. dock, discuss a polar flight by small dirigible or super sea plane.