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Since the correspondent of Tass was the only newspaperman aboard the Soviet rescue ship Krassin his despatches could not be cross-checked from others. The Captain of the Krassin, a Norwegian, Herr Egge, displayed the wise and characteristic taciturnity of his people. Three days later, Captain Zappi was spirited into Stockholm, where he shed a thoroughgoing flood of tears before the aged mother of Dr. Malmgren and sobbed: "That Soviet aviator must have seen a pair of leather trousers which we had thrown away. ... I have a clear conscience before God. . . . Dr. Malmgren and we were friends and brothers. . . . When he ordered us to go on he would not accept any provisions and lay down upon the ice, clad only in his sport suit. ... You know him, Donna Malmgren. All we could do was to obey him. He was like that." Frau Malmgren was quoted by correspondents thus: "I feel perfectly calm. I believe absolutely that Captain Zappi has told the truth." Sweden. As the Lapland Express, carrying Nobile & Party, rushed across Sweden, last week, a few, sympathetic peasants, one a child of six, brought wild flowers to General Nobile when the express made its usual frequent halts. But the Italian's special car was carefully switched around the suburbs of Stockholm—home of Dr. Finn Malmgren—lest any mob should lynch. Italy. Signor Benito Mussolini said: "Naturally, an inquiry will be made—in Italy by prominent Italian officials. Any suggestion for any other inquiry would be absurd and offensive, and if it were advanced from any quarter it would be immediately rejected." The Italian Air Ministry took the ingenious position that since General Nobile is a resident of Milan his return and formal welcome concern that city alone. But even the most disciplined Fascist cannot disremember how Rome and all Italy welcomed and gloried in Umberto Nobile when he returned from the successful Amundsen-Ellsworth-Nobile flight around the Pole (TIME, May 17 and 24, 1926). As the General's car rolled into Milan, Fascists cheered, faith unshaken. Multinational. The great Arctic explorer, Vilhjalmur Stefansson, scion of Danish stock, born in Canada, alumnus of Harvard, resident of Manhattan, appropriately put an astute, multinational period to the Nobile affair last week. Said he: "It was generally known before Nobile left that he had no experience in Arctic conditions. It would have been proper to criticize him on that ground before he started, but such criticism is out of place at present. "I don't know what happened to Malmgren, whether he was left to die, whether he was stripped of his clothing, whether his body was eaten by his companions. Perhaps no one will ever know. "But it is clear to me that Zappi and Mariano, in going on ahead, felt that they were acting as a relief expedition for the entire party they had left behind them on the ice. As a matter of fact, it might easily have happened that their conduct might have been the means of saving the others. "I hope political considerations will not prevent the truth from being told." Titina. Latest despatches reported Titina well and still happy. She was not eaten because the main Nobile party, with which she sagaciously remained, was never out of other food.