FAMOUS EXPLORER.

Manawatu Standard, Volume L, Issue 142, 15 May 1930, Page 7

FAMOUS EXPLORER.

DEATH OF DR, NANSEN. LONDON, May 14. The death has occurred of Dr. Fridtjof Nansen, the famous explorer, aged 69. . Dr. Nansen lias been ill since March with phlebitis. Yesterday he was attacked by paralysis of the heart and died in a few minutes. The newspapers pay a tribute to his achievement as explorer, scientist and humanitarian. The Daily Telegraph says that there would be found no peers among the greatest Vikings. Dr. Nansen made his first Arctic exploration in 1882, followed by a second in 1889, when he crossed ' Greenland. From 1893 to 1896 lie was engaged in his famous expedition in the Fram, when he penetrated farther north than any of his predecessors. Unlike most explorers Nansen became a greater man by his retirement from active participation in exploration adventures. Referring to his work as a humane statesman The Living Age says: “We think of Nansen as an Arctic explorer; but his most memorable work has been in Russia, the Near East, Greeoe and Armenia, as the League of Nations’ High Commissioner for Refugees. The lives that. he has saved and made useful may be counted by hundreds of thousands. There are nations, including his own Norway, who have a debt to him for their independence or preservation. At Geneva he is consistently a spokesman for the weak and oppressed. It was not for Arctic exploration that he received the Nobel Peace Prize, not for Arctic exploration that he was elected rector of St. Andrews, nor for that did he win confidence in Russia and affection just this side of idolatry in Armenia. And. yet, when his name is mentioned, we still say: ‘Yes, Nansen, the explorer.’ ”