The Evening Star MONDAY, JULY 16, 1928. ORDEAL OF THE ARCTIC.

Evening Star, Issue 19919, 16 July 1928, Page 6

The Evening Star MONDAY, JULY 16, 1928. ORDEAL OF THE ARCTIC.

'•'Osu shall*' be taken and 1 Ito other left ” might bo the epitaph fur those victims of the Italia who must leave their hones amid the Arctic waste. Quo man was killed when the airship snapped under its burden of frozen snow. Professor Malgrem, one of Gio parly of three who sec out to trudge across the ice, hud his hand broken at the same time. Ho .succumbed early to the rigours of that tcrriblo tramp, preferring to die alone, it is said, rather than to be a drag on his companions. All the rest ol the company have now been rescued except tho seven men who wore carried away with tho envelope of the airship, and of whom nothing has been seen or heard since. It would .bo impossible to believe that they are still alive. Of tho airmen who have met with mishaps in rescue efforts two have been saved, and the veteran Captain Amundson and Captain Gilbaud and Dietriebson. who went with him, are still missing, exactly four weeks having passed since they began their flight. Amundsen will have done more than give his lilc for a friend if, as is too much to ho feared, tho list of casualties must Ik* swollen by his loss. He thought very little of General Mobile when ho had experience of him as a pilot when ho crossed tiie Pole in tho Norge two years ago, and he is not likely to Juvvo known anything of his companions. One member of a lain! rescue party is also among the missing. Tho miracle is that any of the Italia’s party should have been able to survive the rigours to which for so long a time they have been exposed. It is fiftytwo days since their disaster befell. Tho ice-breaker on the whole lias proved more effectual for actual rcscuo than tho aeroplanes, though it did not leave Kronstadt until after the catastrophe, and it had its own difficulties in tho final stages. Only a thin font protected, for seven weeks, Nobile’s main party from the elements, and the men who left them must have had, il anything, less shelter still. The Arctic, with all its harshness, is certainly kinder than the Antarctic. The first blizzard, in the South Polar regions, would certainly have ended the sufferings of men so exposed, half-starved, and some of them disabled. Perhaps the best idea of the conditions which these men must have endured can bo gained from the’ account of Captain Amundsen's experiences, when the two aeroplanes with which he was attempting a flight over the Polo camo to grief in the same region three years ago. One had to ho abandoned, and tho two crews, numbering six men ,n all, made their flight hack to Spitzhergeu in tho other, alter a month during which nothing had been hoard of them. First appearances would suggest that almost anywhere it would re possible for an aeroplane to alight or to rise on this Arctic plain, “but,” writes Amundsen. “ it takes an aviator to express an opinion about landing conditions amidst Polar ice, and nut an Andie explorer. What the second considers to bo a flat plateau can bo absolutely useless in the opinion of tho first.”

Landing plates are (cw. which explains the difficulty of (he would-be airmen rescuers of the Italia’s main party in getting near enough to the marooned men to do more than drop provisions to them. Throe weeks were spent by Amundsen’s six men, alter they had extricated their ’plane, in levelling an iceberg and preparing and smoothing a slide just lung enough lor it to make its ascent from. They worn not sure till the last that all 'her.' labours would not bo in vain, ami that they would not have done better to endeavour to trudge across the icc 400 miles to Cape Columbia, though, iu the state to which half-rations had reduced them, that attempt would have meant almost certain death. The machine rose, and an eight hours’ flight took them back to safety instead' of a journey' of many weeks. They find the ’plane to sleep in while, their slide was being made. Lincoln Ellsworth describes tho dangers with which that toil was accompanied;—

Tho sweat was rolling down my face, vapour was rising from tho sweat, while at this work of smoothing down tho ice. 1 removed my glasses to clear them of tho congealing vapour. I did not have them off for long, but it was long enough. That night I went badly blind in one cvo.

Dietrichsou went blind in both eyes. For the following two days lie had to lie iu his bag!, _ his eyes tightly bandaged, suffering from acute inflammation.

Tho six men wore reduced in strength by the half-meals on which they had to fare, but they did not otherwise suffer. Lief Diotrichsou is now again missing with Amundsen.