MARTYR TO SCIENCE

Stratford Evening Post, Issue 19, 17 August 1928, Page 5

MARTYR TO SCIENCE

PROFESSOR MALMGREN. THE BRAVEST OF ALL DIED TO SAVE OTHERS. LONDON, August 15. i “Professor Malmgren was a gentleman in the full sense of the word will, like Scott and Franklin, always be remembered by the world as a, martyr in the. cause of science.” says Professor Behonnek in his account of the Italia expedition. “It wa s the irony of fate that he, the bravest of ns all, should bo the only oue of nine survivors of the crash to die.” “I shall always remember him as ho left ns in the dim light of the whit© polar night, miserable, crippled and loaded down with ids knapsack of provisions. His strength was already failing, but his will was indomitable. I shall not forget his last words, that he believed he eon Id reach the mainland over the ice.

“He did not go to save himself, but as the only hope of rescue fox - the entire expedition. The whole world can be- proud that in these days of egotism there are still men able to give their, lives for others rdliberately under such terrible conditions. When the Italia crashed Professor Malmgren was standing near the steering gear, and did not escape injury*

> “The cabin smashed nose down, ward on the ice at an angle, with threefold velocity given by the continued momentum of the airship after the engines had stopped, the speed imparted by the wind and the impetus resulting from the fall. Professor Malmgren’s left side was painfully bruised and his left arm or Collarbone injured. It was difficult to teach the injured arm owing to the- double suit necessitated by the temperature of H degress centigrade below zero. > “Aboard the Krassin, Commander Zappi told me Professor Malmgren was unfit to march because h/.s arm was broken and his legs frozen. He carried the arm lightly in a towel which T brought him as a sling. Although * the arm was unusable he chopped ice and left it to melt fox tb,e water supply of the camp. General Nobile told me after the x-es-cuo that Professor Malmgren wanted to commit suicide after the crash, hut the general him- He was the first to take thq telescope t 0 find several metal cases of food which had been thrown out of the airship. “He was ,a descendant of the Nordic soldiers of the seventeenth century, who let Themselves be shot for those -they served though their term of service was expiring in a few hours. He left all the bear meat with us- he did not take even pemfiiioan to make up for it, taking on y his personal share of pemmlcan and chocolate, „ , , “I asked whether I could take am message to Sweden, to which he replied- ‘lf were a Swede I would ask you to take several greetings, but you cannot have quite the same u y ~11,.,,. .q W ftfle ’ I knew feelings as a fellow Swede, x. he did not want me to write to hins imvouia only increase her sufferings,”