DROP CROSS AT POLE

Stolp, Germany, April 17. —(AP)— When the dirigible Italia, with General Umberto Nobile, flies over the Arctic wastes on her flight to the North Pole, her cabin will contain a large wooden cross, a framed Madonna, a vase filled with artificial roses and numerous talisman presented to the Italian crew.

Conducting the correspondent for the Associated Press through the interior of the Italia, which is being overhauled here for her next hop for King’s bay, Spitsbergen, General Nobile pointed out the various objects which are being carried.

The cabin contains a framed Madonna which accompanied General Nobile on his first trip over the Pole to the dirigible Norge. Under the Madonna is a vase filled with artificial roses.

“My wife put them there to conjure up a vision of flowery Italy even as we hover over the desert of ice,” the general observed.

A six-foot cross presented by Pope Pius which will be dropped over the Pole was stowed with particular care in a space above the cabin. “It contains an aperture on the top into which the pope has placed a handwritten parchment,” Nobile told the correspondent.

In the cabin also are pictures of Nobile’s wife and daughter, signed photographs of King Victor Emmanuel, Queen Helena and Premier Mussolini and numerous talisman such as lucky pigs and teddy bears.

While going through the Italia, General Nobile asserted proudly that its collection of scientific instruments and charts was the most complete ever assembled for a polar expedition. Strongly contrasting with the profusion of instruments was the spartan simplicity of the accommodations for the personal comfort of those aboard the ship. There were no seats and chairs, for instance. “It is better to have the equivalent of their weight in additional fuel than to be caught short of juice,” Commander Zappi explained.

This story was published in the April 18, 1928, edition of the Lewiston Tribune.