INTERNATIONAL: Ring Around Nobile

Excitedly played by citizens of many lands, last week, was the game of Ring Around Nobile—a question game. Was that Swede really eaten by those two Italians? Would Dictator Mussolini snub and degrade General Nobile? What about Titina, the General's little, yapping fox terrier bitch? Why wasn't she eaten? Is bitch eating worse than cannibalism? Russia. Moscow and Leningrad saw redder than usual, last week, as the great Communist newspapers Pravda ("Truth") and Izvestia ("News'") flayed "these Fascist swine!" An editorial in Pravda—whose editor is Nikolai Bukharin, closest associate of Dictator Josef Stalin (see RUSSIA)—keynoted significantly thus: "Here in Russia we know the true meaning of the word comrade. Among the Fascisti it means every man for himself." Copied from Pravda and reprinted by hundreds of provincial papers was a ribald, satanic poem by Comrade Vladimir Myakofski, entitled Cross and Champagne. Based on the undisputed facts that General Nobile dropped upon the North Polar region a large cross blessed by the Pope and carried a supply of champagne in which to toast this event, the poem soars into the very zenith of satiric sacrilege and "Champagne Popery."* Coldly, factually the Soviet press service Tass presented details on the basis of which cannibalism might be imputed to Captains Filipo Zappi and Alberto Mariano (respectively Pilot and Navigator of the Nobile dirigible Italia), who set off to tramp across the ice to land with the Swedish meteorologist Dr. Finn Malmgren, but were alone when rescued (TIME, July 23). Tass reported that, on the day before the rescue of Zappi and Mariano, a Soviet plane photographed them from the air, and that a third man or his remains was then visible, prostrate on the ice. Tass told that when Captain Zappi was rescued he said that Dr. Malmgren had been left behind some days previously (at his own request) to die. Tass stated that Captain Zappi was wearing, when rescued, Dr. Malmgren's fur boots and coat, and two other pairs of fur boots and two other coats—whereas Zappi's comrade, Captain Mariano, seemed sick, weak, and wore no fur boots.