“NO QUESTION OF FOOLHARDINESS”

Press, Volume XCVII, Issue 28480, 9 January 1958, Page 8

“NO QUESTION OF FOOLHARDINESS”

British Comments On Fuchs’s Plans

fN.Z Press Association—Copyright) (Rec. 8 p.m.) LONDON, Jan. 7. Sir Miles Clifford, a member of the Commonwealth trans-Ant-arctic Expedition Committee, said tonight there was no question of the British explorer Dr. Vivian Fuchs being foolhardy in pressing on with his trek over the white continent

Interviewed in the British Broadcasting Corporation’s “Home and Abroad” programme, Sir Miles Clifford said the worst that could happen to Dr. Fuchs was to reach Scott Base at McMurdo Sound too late to be taken out by ship. “That is not catastrophic. Dr. Fuchs never expected to get there before the end of February at the earliest,” he said.

The difficulties of getting Dr. Fuchs out by air to McMurdo Sound were a good deal eased by the Otter aircraft now at Scott Base. It was much more powerful than the Beaver aircraft.

Sir Miles Clifford was asked if he considered that Sir Edmund Hillary had been right in urging Dr. Fuchs to abandon his transAntarctic crossing, in worsening weather. He replied: “Hillary’s suggestion’s were made out of his own experience. He felt obliged to make them. Equally, Dr. Fuchs is the leader of the combined expedition. What he has said the committee must fully accept, and has accepted.” Sir Douglas Mawson’s View The veteran Australian Antarctic explorer, Sir Douglas Mawson, told the Melbourne “Sun” from Adelaide that he would like to see Dr. Fuchs carry on after reaching the Pole, says a Melbourne cablegram. “I think that Dr, Fuchs has done a magnificent job,” he said. “He has travelled completely unknown parts of the ice cap and has evidently met with terrible conditions,” he said. “He has carried out his scientific programme all the way. I don’t know what condition his transport is in after the hammering it must have received, but once he gets to the Pole he will be travelling a well-known, carefully-mapped route to Scott Base. “But he must weigh the chances himself. If he decides to go on, then I hope he does his damndest,” said Sir Douglas Mawson.