"THE SHACKLETON EPIC"

Dominion, Volume 10, Issue 2945, 4 December 1916, Page 8

"THE SHACKLETON EPIC"

. * AN AMERICAN APPRECIATION. '"All saved. All v;ell- Shackleton'— a message that to set the blood afire," said a New Yoik newspaper in a characteristic ttppreoi.7;ion of Sir Ernest Shackleton's lecent achievements in the Antarctic. "Months ago their ship went down, and the members of the Shackleton Expedition finally made Elephant Island in a whale boat'. Twenty-two men dug a cave in the cliff of everlasting ice above that wild and tempestuous Antarctic Sea. Shackleton and a handful sailed off in a cockleshell to do tho impossible—get through to civilisation and return with a rescuing ship. And they did the impossible. • "This" is one of tho epics of tho world. Were Shackleton living in Viking days the bards would make a saga of his deeds and sing it up and down the Northland by great fires and at great feasts in the halls of mighty men. They vtould tell of how that cockleshell fought its way north through icebergs- and crashing floes with tho indomitable leader and tho five volunteers who went for help; they would paint' in grim words J', the dangers that were met, the perils that beset; they would tell of how tho 1 island of South Georgia was reached a j month later, and of how tho six, abandoning the cockleshell, crossed tho mountains of snow and ice that composed the island, a battle of .thirty miles, with death beside all tho way, a passage that never had been .made; thoy would tell of how civilisation was reached at last-^ 1 the civilisation of a whaling' post on a t far-flung frontier. 1 "And then how those bards would 9 chant the three succeeding attempts to - rescue his marooned men which Shackleton made—turned back, flouted by the seas and tho winds and tho ice! And ? how their voices woidd Tise high and 1 the harps twang louder while all men listened, breathing heavily, as the bards s sang the final and successful attempt! t "'All saved. All well. Shackleton.' s Just that and nothing more. What if men decry Antarctic exploration as of no value I Perhaps the world has become !_ too utilitarian, looking to find material gain in everything that is done and counting it of littlo value unless there , is material gain. Porhaps in this deed - of epic heroism, ns bold and high as any 1 the blind Homer or Norse kald ever f sung, tho world can find something of value." \ '