Finis

With a flourish, the New York Herald-Tribune published last week more than a column of matter which purported to be an interview with Explorer Lincoln Ellsworth, reopening the squabble between him and General Nobile as to who did what aboard the Pole-crossing Norge (TIME, Aug. 2). Mr. Ellsworth was quoted directly. Hurt, angry, he flayed the Norwegian Aero Club for permitting Nobile to assume prominence upon the expedition in the first instance, and specifically, for telling Nobile, lately, that he might write more than a "technical appendix" to the official book of the trip, which Ellsworth and Amundsen are compiling. Words like this came forth: "They have handed me a rotten deal. . . . How very different when they needed money!"

With emphasis, Mr. Ellsworth next day denied the Herald-Tribune's article. "I don't care what Nobile writes," he said. Then he put an end to all the press stories about his reputed differences with Nobile: "I want to give Roald Amundsen 100 percent credit for the whole flight. It was his idea. He organized it and put it through. . . . I give credit to General Nobile for building the airship and for captaining it across the Polar Sea."

Cobham

Australian policemen struggled with, then fled from, a mob of 75,000 women fainting, men shoving and grunting, when Pilot Alan Cobham hove in sight last week over Melbourne, at the end of his flight in a seaplane from England. The ovation far outdid the holiday mood indulged in last fortnight by Port Darwin, Cobham's first point of contact with the kangaroo continent (TIME, Aug. 16). The motors of his big De Havilland ship were examined, found in flawless condition after a month and a half of droning through all temperatures, humidities and aridities, from the English Channel, over the Dolomites, Syria and Arabia, the Indian Ocean, New South Wales--13,000 miles. Cobham planned to relax for a day or two, then fly home again. Object: to prove that airplanes can traverse the most hazardous, inaccessible arcs of the globe.