SPIRIT TO DARE AND DO

Evening Post, Volume XCII, Issue 58, 6 September 1916, Page 6

SPIRIT TO DARE AND DO

The heroic death of Captain Scott, Lieutenant Oates,. and their comrades in tho Antarctic wastes —proving, as Scott said, that Englishmen still knew how to die—occurred at a time when there might have been some doubt as to the effect of civilisation on the physical and moral fibre, of men. It was a time of peace, a prolonged peace that had begun to be seriously disturbed by apprehensions of war. In Europe arms and alarms were piling up. Increasing arms were multiplying alarms, and the alarms became in turn a pretext for adding to the arms, and it was already apparent that this accumulation of reciprocating cause and effect would end in a European catastrophe. Nervously scenting danger, civilised man began to question himself, to wonder whether "a soft age" had reduced his fighting power in comparison with "the brave days of old." Amid this general atmosphere of apprehension, the bluffing German exalted his own horn, and incidentally fanned its own conceit, with.a bitter blast of criticism of alleged British decadence. It was in such circumstances that tho Empire and the world were thrilled with the Captain Scott story, and its promise was soon to be borne out on the oceans and on Continental battlefields, where the intelligent courage and unconquerable pluck of Britons have been lifted to a plane worthy of the bravest of the olden times. An

echo of tho Scott, heroism comes back to-da.y in the story of Shackleton and of Wild, hardly less inspiring though less tragic. But this latest Antarctic episode blends with the general environment. It stands out not as a beacon amid the half-lights of a "soft" age, but as part and parcel of the spirit and performance ;of Britons the woii4 over. —the spirit to endeavour, and not less the will to succeed. Whether the thing is done at Elephant Island, the Falkland Islands, off Coronel, or in the wintry North Sea-, the world is now familiar with it,.and Britons know that the aspersions and the doubts of tho pre-war period were groundless. Civilisation has not eaten the heart out of character. Men are as brave as ever they were, and the British power to dare and to do, on the land, in the air, upon tho water, and in the undersea, is in no measure below its best. Britons of the twentieth century are still the descendants of tlie Elizabethans.