CONGRESSMEN ON TOUR

Press, Volume XCVI, Issue 28425, 4 November 1957, Page 11

CONGRESSMEN ON TOUR

Visit To N.Z. And Antarctica (Rec. 12.30 a.m. WASHINGTON, November 3. Six members of the Hoose of Representatives Inter-State and Foreign Commerce Committee will leave next Thursday for Antarctica, it was announced today. They will leave New York for Copenhagen, then fly over the North Pole by way of Anchorage, Alaska. Halts on the way to the South Pole include Tokyo. Manila, Sydney, and Christchurch. The return route will include a pause at Honolulu.

Mr Oren Harris (Arkansas. Democrat), the committee chairman and party leader, said that, the whole trip would last about on a month and cover an estimated 38.000 miles.

The committee announcement said that a major objective of the tour was the “study of current activities in the International Geophysical Year, with particular attention to the Antarctic project.”

For many years, the committee said, it had exercised legislative jurisdiction over such things as civil aviation communications and weather science, and was keenly aware of the great contribution to general scientific knowledge that would develop from I.G.Y The committee hoped to arrive in New Zealand on November 19 and to spend two weeks in Antarctica with Rear-Admiral George Dufek.

Mr Harris said that the committee will visit all the United States stations in Antarctica. Weather permitting it would stop at the South Pole itself.