REASSURANCES

Evening Post, Volume CIX, Issue 121, 26 May 1925, Page 7

REASSURANCES

POLAR STAY CANNOT BE BRIEF.

(AUSTRALIAN-NEW ZEALAND CABLE ASSOCIATION.)

(Received 26th May, 11 a.m.) LONDON. 25th May. Commander Prestrud, Naval Attache at the Norwegian Legation, who accompanied Amundsen to the South Pole in his expedition in 1912, was interviewed by the "Evening Standard." He said there was no present cause for anxiety. He regarded the calculations of the distances and probable flying times as being as unreliable as Derby tips, and preferred to examine the possibilities. Amundsen had two good Italian machines, fitted with reliable Bolls-Boyce engines. When they left they flew so welf that they disappeared in five minutes. Assuming that everything worked well, they would reach the Pole in five or six hours; but what would happen then? When Amundsen reached the South Pole it took two days to verify the position. He had to send men twenty-five and fifty miles to make the necessary calculations.

.Amundsen must, he said, similarly prove that he had actually reached the North Pole. He might be fifty or seventy miles away in the first instance. He would certainly not leave before he had made tho necessary calculations, without which the results would be regarded as scientifically' valueless, and the calculations might occupy two or 'three days owing to the cloudy weather.