VIA ARCTIC.

Hawera Star, Volume XLVIII, 25 August 1924, Page 7

VIA ARCTIC.

SHORTEST ROUTE FOR DIRIGIBLES FROM LONDON TO TOKIO In the course of an interview in Wellington Dr. A'. -Stefansson, the famous Arc-tie explorer, was asked whether it was his intention to head another expedition to the Arctic, following up his discoveries of 1918. “I think the period for expeditions to the Arctic is over,” said the explorer, ‘,‘and I don’t suppose that I shall go again. When I say that the time is over for expeditions of discovery, 1 mean that literally. All that may be known is pretty well known, and just as the terrors of the Atlantic were swept away by Columbus, the terrors of the Arctic have also gone. These are the terrors of ignorance—l use the word in the broadest sense. You remember that before Columbus went forth no one would have given him a sou for ten thousand miles of land in his New Spain. Not they! They thought the world was flat, and if he went to the edge he would plunge over the top into eternity. They also thought there were storms such as no vessel could live in, arid that the Atlantic was alive with dragons that spouted fire, and seaserpents that would drag a ship and all in to the perdition. These were the terrors of ignorance. Columbus swept them all away by crossing.the Atlantic and experiencing nothing much more than he might on a trip up the Mediterranean. So it has been very largely with the Arctic. No one knew much about it, so they filled the land with terrors—terrors which really don’t exist.

“That is why I say that the time for expedition is over, and the time for making use of the Arctic for commercial purposes has arrived. I mean by that, iisihg the Arctic routes for our dirigibles. It is quite possible—the difficulties are mostly imaginative. “Wait a moment, please?” and witli that the visitor vanished into another room to return with a folded map. “Here is a map which has never yet been published, and which consequently none in New 7 Zealand has yet seen. You see what it is—it is a map of the northern hemisphere. Not like many you may have seen —the majority of which fade into white spaces of nothingness as you go north leaving civilisation behind you, The central point of this map is "the North Pole, and the floating ice round it the hub of a great wheel, from which Die continents radiate like spokes. The outer edge (the map is circular) is the equator. You can see at a gla uce that a far greater proportion of the earth’s surface i,s contained in this hemisphere—Europe, Asia, North Ameiica, and even the third of Africa-. The black section in the centre represents floating ice—that is'the part of the world round the Pole where navigation by sea is impracticable. “For centuries the world has held that the most difficult and wonderful feat would be to discover the North Pole—only a point, of course—but you can see from this map that that would not by any means be the most difficult feat, as the Pole is not in the centre of the pack ice. The greatest difficulty lies in having to travel the greatest distance over the ice, and that point would be a good deal nearer the Continent of Africa than the actual point of the Pole.

‘But coming down to the practical, as travel by the air becomes more and more reliable for safety, there is only one route between Europe and Asia which cuts down the distance mateiiallv, and that is the Arctic route. Here is ;the starting point—say from Edinburgh. You cross:-the A'ortli Sea, skirt the cojist of Xonvav as far as you like, f and so cross the north of Europe and Asia—to Tokio in Japan. Ordinarily it means that a postcard sent from London to Tokio would have to travel some 10,OOP miles that is, via America and across the Pacific from Vancouver. But by taking the Arctic route the distance is reduced to 4500 miles. If you know the speed of the modern dirigible, allow a little for stoppages, and you will be able to figure out how’ long it will take to cover the journey between England and Japan hv‘ this route.”