THE New Zealand Herald AND DAILY SOUTHERN CROSS THURSDAY, MAY 15, 1930. NANSEN: MAN OF ACTION.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXVII, Issue 20564, 15 May 1930, Page 8

THE New Zealand Herald AND DAILY SOUTHERN CROSS THURSDAY, MAY 15, 1930. NANSEN: MAN OF ACTION.

The news of Dr. Nansen's death will send echoing through many British minds the words of Tennyson's ode in honour of the Duke of Wellington —"O fall'n at length that tower of strength, which stood four-square to all the winds that blew!" For there was always about Nansen something of towering strength and unshakable poise, not only in his impressible physique but in his great personality ; and it is inevitable to think of him as calmly withstanding all buffets and offering protection to those whom tho storms of ill-fortune had battered into need of shelter. This was the Nansen whose name had become known in recent years throughout Europe and the wider world, and will long be remembered, for his succouring genius extended to hundreds of thousands of refugees and prisoners of war. Yet the simile fits him inadequately. A citadel is close rooted to one spot, stationary, though widely seen and welcoming; whereas it was Nansen's way to be ever seeking. Poise he had, but it was the alert poise of an unresting soul, aquiver with eagerness to speed away wherever need called. He was gifted for action. In the work that gives meaning to these reflections, that of j the League of Nations in its magj nificent endeavours to repatriate every languishing prisoner and restore to a home loved and lost every victim of pitiless exile, he was the leader and he was everywhere. ITis mobility was amazing. Now he would be in tho Gulf of Finland, next in Berlin, then in the Balkans, on to the Caucasus, and so about this and that stricken country in a fury of mercy that left even tho committees co-operating with hint wondering where he would turn up next. But he was more than a little scornful of committees: to him they were harder to be borne thah lawyers and long speech-makers, though created by a necessity nob to bo denied in the League's daily work and of some use when they took the way he pointed out from the chair. To him they were like, sleeves. Many a time some stranger in Geneva has seen a striding figure, tall above the average, straight as a larch, notably fair of complexion and blue of eye, and marked the overcoat merely thrown across the shoulders. "That's Nansen" the quick question would be answered; and in very truth that was Nansen —caught for a brief while by the office and forum requirements of the League, but moving as busily there as once upon a time he had walked across Greenland for his health and would soon be again afoot to find out those whom the League wanted to help—and with little care to put his coat on properly. But of course there was a time when, whatever the impatience of his shrugs, lie had to appear in a diplomatic uniform and a cocked hat. That was in 1905, when Norway and Sweden became separate again and he was sent to the Court of St. James as the first-appointed Norwegian ambassador. And London was proud and glad to have him. His mourners now are in many lands, perhaps in more lands than would be the mourners of any other man who had served this day and I generation and fallen on sleep. But in England he had countless friends before that day of honour for himself and the country toward which, he often said, he felt a yearning to turn his steps whenever he set out from his own. Time came, too, when he was seen in academic robes,

for venerable St. Andrews University, pride of Scotsmen, chose him for its' Lord Rector, after Rudyard Kipling, the Earl of Balfour, Lord Piosebery and Sir James Barrie. What a Lord Rector!—and what a rectorial address, its subject, "Adventure," expounded best of all by one to ,whom it was the breath of life! Yet there was no incongruity in choice of him. He began life in a laboratory, as a biologist; and politics, though he had the makings of a statesman, as Scandinavia remembers, were less to him than science. It was his wont, in the hours when he was induced to talk about himself, to speak, quite simply and unaffectedly, as if he had a grudge against the fate that was for ever snatching him away from research, just when he was on the point of running some elusive fact to earth, and flinging him into a situation "much better handled by the fire brigade." He had a learner's heart, and in a hall of learning lie I was at home. Professor of zoology, maker of plans for hydrographical survey and oceanic study, writer of books, he had full right to stand I where quests of letters had brought so many elect. What St. Andrews did was a deed to be coveted, so ] well did it become a fount of knowledge and ho the office.

Yet this distinction could hold him only for a brief space, as the Court of »St. James had to let him go after three years, for the habit of action had been so on him since that unprecedented walk across Greenland that he was never rightly at home except when he was adventurously abroad. This phase of his life—more than a phase, since its living thread runs throughout like an artery pulsing with tonic blood—began then, and it never really ended. At twenty-one he was afloat heading lor the North Pole, coming, back baffled but bent on going again, j Six years later lie had Svcrdrup j with him leading an exploring expedition through unknown and uninhabited tracts of }iia enamouring Greenland. Next he put to the proof his idea that, it was possible to drift across the roof of the world j on its ocean currents. Who that' ever heard of it can forget this ex-' ploit of the 'nineties and the Fram'? Almost beaten, worn in body but undaunted, in dire straits yet holding on, his party stood at bay for a year in Franz Joseph Land, till the .lackson expedition got through to the rescue and the great little ship and her famous crew were brought back

to safety and a reverberating welcome. Other things of the kind were in view when tho war broke out and its treacherous minefields made all thought of his intended ocean investigations impossible. Then the need of the hungry and the homeless captured his heart, and the Work of the League swallowed him tip till this great part of it had been well done. Still he worked on in other spheres of its welcome activity, until in the year before last, at sixtyeight, there came to him a longing for "one fight more." The Arctic was again calling, calling; and he got ready for an attempt to reach the North Pole by airship. It was not to be. Inaction was at last imposed by the inexorable hand that no man approaching three score years and ten' can lightly disobey, and now with suddenness he has heard a more imperious call. There closes another saga of his Viking race. He who fought afield so well is at homo elsewhere, and universal desire is breathed that he, after having toiled so valorously for peace on behalf of others, may himself know whatever of this his restless spirit may sometimes have sought.