Bennett Balloons

As regularly as U. S. tennists once won and later, until this year, lost Davis Cup matches, U. S. balloonists once won and now lose the annual James Gordon Bennett Balloon Race--No. 1 gasbag event of the year. Last year they were too discouraged to enter. Last week, as the 25th James Gordon Bennett Balloon Race got under way in Brussels, there was again no U. S. entry, possibly because the race was suddenly called for June instead of September as in the past. Entered were twelve balloons from five nations. Like monstrous dirty soap bubbles, they drifted up from Brussels toward Germany. Two days later all had jolted to earth with Poland's Polonia II and Belgium's Belgica farthest (both about 870 mi.) from the start. But Germany hotly filed a protest and a demand that the race be run over, claiming that Czechoslovakian planes had forced down two of the three German balloons. Czechoslovakia replied that its pilots were merely waving at the balloonists, who misunderstood the gesture as an order to descend. Germany retorted that the pilots waved pistols. At week's end the International Aeronautic Federation was still pondering the squabble, had not announced a winner.

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