ANTARCTIC EXPLORATION.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LI, Issue 15549, 5 March 1914, Page 6

ANTARCTIC EXPLORATION.

The strong note of utility struck by Dr. Mawson in his references to the results of his protracted Antarctic expedition is timely and welcome. The glamour of romance and the flavour of adventure attached to these periodical expeditions to the South, when man is called upon to war against Nature in her grimmest guise, need no accentuation. Emphasis is required, however, of the fact that men take their lives in their hands, spend years of toil and suffer unnumbered hardships with an eye to a greater end than personal fame and personal gain. When a party returns from the Polar regions with a tale of difficulties surmounted and dangers defied, the popular imagination is immediately fired, and the members are proclaimed as heroes. When the first keen interest has simmered down, there is often too little attention paid to the solid achievements of the adventurers, the addi-

tion which they have made to the sum of human knowledge, the new

light which they have thrown upon natural phenomena, and the problems they have helped to solve. Yet it is these results which provide the justification for the human lives risked and often sacrificed for the time and money expended. It is gratifying to national sentiment to be taught afresh that the qualities of courage, hardihood and endurance are not extinct in the race, but it is not less gratifying to know that something practical and of benefit to humanity is being done at the same time. This renders welcome the emphasis laid by Dr. Mawson upon the practical side of the great work which he has accomplished, with its possibilities of benefit to Australia and New Zealand.