Evening Star Newspaper, June 17, 1923, Page 77

* THE SUNDAY STAR, WASH MacMillan, in New Exploration of North, Will - Study Glaciers of the Polar Regions y Facts to Be Obtained May T’lr;aw Light on Present Discussion of Changes in Weather® | Leader of Expedition Tells What the Explorers Can Add to Mankind's Store of Knowledge. .Birds by Million Migrate to Within 400 Miles of Pole—Abundance of Fish Life. T, Me, June 16— the question most often asked of explorers Is, “Why do you go?”’ Because he has missed only two out ©of the st fifteen years in the arctic; PecayBe in 1908 he voluntarily re- lingmished his profession as & college fessor at Worcester Academy to il north with Peary on his memora- . ble dash to the pole, Dr. Donaid B MacMillan seems to stand forth pre- eminently as the man to answer the wuestion. Bven now he is outfitting his §9- ! ot schooner Bowdoin to sail for the arctic. on June 23. He will. spend months locked in the lce. Here is Dr. MacMillan's answer: “The average man's conception of the north is so forbidding that he fs 1y puzzled to know why the expenditure of thousands of dol! and the loss of men should not deter the exploter. ‘Drawing upon bis imagination and “the harrowing accounts eariy explorers. the teader plefurcs a grea vhite land swept by drifting snows. driven by biting winds, veid of all animal and plant life, a dead world revolving beneath a long summer's sun and wrapped in the deathlike ~tillness and solitude of the long, dark winter night “What good or enjovyment can pos- ~ibly be derived from a visit to such < land? Is the purpose a search for mere adventure, for valuable mineral, for lands rich in resources, for scien- 'ific knowledge or purely geographi- cal—that is, an accurate plotting of 1ll lands upon the world’s surface? “Undoubtedly the Norsemen were our first arctic explorers. Those _-iof=Fy mariners more than & thousand vears ago dared to turn the prows of their open bodts northward through attered ice floes toward the land of the midnight sun. Eventually they beheld stretching out before them that apparently limitless and fm- venetrable fleld of ice and wondered what was beyond M has won- dered ever since and will continue 1o wonder jus: so long as theve is a mountain that obstructs the vision or a point of land around which he can- not see. It {s the task of the explorer 0 surmount the obstacles of nature and to learn the truth. * % ok % CSTAROM the carliest times conjectures have been what man would find at the ‘he world if he ever suc attalning that distant point many-of our best students of aretle history deemed impossible. In the cays of antiquity there were poetical and . mythlcal conceptions galore *Such are always supplied where ig- \orance rules, “For years. prior to the discovery of the pole, our own scientists per « sisted in the belief of an open pblar --#ea. Dr. Elisha Kent Kane ciaimed to have seen it. Dr. Isaac Israel Hayes believed in i, Strong and scientific reasons were advanced or it. “For many years man believed that !¢ he would only persist in going on over the ice pack at the periphery . of the Arctic ocean, finally he would various fe as to top of ceeded in which he rewarded hy the sight of blue most northern end of this great land. | water, over which he could joyfully, sail to the pole. 5 “The Britlsh norih Dpole expedition ' of 1875, elaborately equipped. had &aith in this mythical open sea and started bravely northward from the nhores of Grant Land. pulling their heavy hoats through and over the at those great barren hills of the far | pressure ridges of t “One by one e polar basin they dropped with scurvy, brought on by exhaustion with their heavy load. Fortunately one man had strength to summon ief, ‘There existed in this country for | by the fossils found among the sand- | ssveral years a ‘Hollow Earth Club.’ | men who belleved that our earth was CAPT. DONALD sad to world in which we live?? touch upon a microscopid what he has done. “When Peary disappeared up over the Greenland ice cap in 1882, no one knew how far rthward the c nent of Greenland extended A believed to the very pole itself and even on ross the top of the world, nearly to the shores of Siberia. When he returned months later he had de- fined the limits and the altitude of t great Greenland continental jce ¢ an area of half a million square miles | attaining a height of 10,000 feet, a creat ice Sahara. which graded dowr | in thickness until the day came when e stepped down from the ice Into a | rolling country of bumblebees, butter- fil flowers and herds of musk-oxen, Ten yeara later he rounded the Let part me of p placing it upon the maps of the world as being located 350 miles from the pole “Within 10 degrees of the pole we find coal seams twenty-five to thirty feet in thickness and in these deposits more than 800 fossil plants. Looking north one can hardly &t one time they were covered with a luxuriant growth of trees, that less than 600 miles. from the pole a tem- perate and even warm climate pre- vailed. But such is true, as evidenced conceive that | stones and shales some 2,000 feet in thickness. There grew the poplar, our knowledge of this little | B. MACMILLAN. cause? happen again? ‘Greenland is an ice cap of § area. Here conditions may be studied and are being studied to help the ! geologist in his conclusions as to the cause of the great ice age and the probability of it return. With m- terest we note that all glaciers in north Greenland and in Ellesmere Land are again advancing ahd have been during the last seventy vemrs. As all glaciers in Alps and Alaska are retreating, geologists can hardly eredit our observations “When Peary reached the pole, what did he find? A vast mass of @rift ice slowly moving from the northern shores of Siberia across the top of the earth and flowing south Letween Spitzbergen and Greenland No land at the pole—there never has been at that particular point, as was proved by the fact that, through a ck in the ice ha dropped a lead to depth of 9.000 feet and found no vottom. “One surprise after another awaits the arctic expiorer. Six montha of nuous sunshine works wonders ven at the edge of the polar sea the suow disappears from the land ry valley is a rushing river in | July. Grass clothes the hills and ve |low. blue and white flowers are | sprinkled upon every sunny siope. The botanist reports more than 700 [yarieties beyond the arctic circle. The birds return in May. literally No one really knows. Why not? today covered with Will it § ovlinder in sbape. By sailing north- | fig, sassafras, magnolia, oak, walnut. |millions of them, some even fiying to + RADIO RECEIVING AND TRANSMITTING TO, BE INSTALLED ON THE BOWDOIN. CAPT. DONALD ward and thence inward, tiiey argued, | man might reach the interior of the eucalyptus, tullp, cypress, hazel and | world. There he would find a great race of people’ living as comfortably and s prosperonsly as iourselves. The smurora or mnorthern lights, they | oxplained, were-the reflection of-prairie fires in the interior. " yeprior to our sailing away- from | New York-in 1908 Commander Peary:| received -a-packet of- letters from learngd soolety. To our surprise and.| delight they proved to be our letters of.introduction to the.people at the north pole. “Solentists believed that necessarily the. polar basin was_shallow. One well-known _author and authority stgted that undoubtedly there was a jarge amount of land at the pole; that he belleved our great icebergs -had thelr origin upon the shores of this ll_l'ldA * k% 66 A ND so on down the centuries man_has. copjectured and the; tyained sclentist.has theorized as to actusl conditions in the far north. " ‘thé ‘explorer *fduhd? he -mada,.tol B.. MACMILLAN AT RIGHT. laurel,. beech, spruce, elm, dogwood, 1edwood of California. : “What tremendous changes through the acons as_this little, world speeds through space! Fog -in, thess same hills, 1,200 feet above the:crushed-ice of the Polar sea, we: find~clam-shelis, proot that at -one-time: land: was - all ocean- bottom. * Tk ok kT “Wi and those now ice-filled waters were as blue and.free as the waters. off. our’ own ‘coasts, . where . was' that mathematical point known' s .the north .pole? Was the ‘earth. at. a different inclination to the sun's.rays, or.did WArm . Goean cusrrénts flow northward and over the top.of the world? s oS “The northern part of North Amer- fea was'at: one time. covered ‘with 32.000,000 square miles Of ice and re- mained covered for:26.000 years. - This had happened not-once’ but-at least ifive ~times, ¥with.-wn. ‘interglacial period.of 75,000 .to 125,000.F HEN Greenland -and-Ellesmer: Land were covered with-forests within 400 miles of the pole itself to build their nests, lay their eggs and care for their young. There we found €ggs never before seon by the white man and priceless in value. * Ok ok % €6 A ND there, to the surprise of the ! naturallet, -we found great herds of ‘musk-oxen,-fat and in good |.conditlon even in the darkness of the winter night. They llve on frozen |'grass In Wind-swept areas and under only a few inches of srow. .“There also we ‘found herds of white “caribou; white wolf, droves of Arectic hare, white and blue foxes, lemming, -ermine, polar bears, seal white ‘whale, - narwhal and- walrus. Hardly a-lake that did- not contain quantities . of char even within 10 degrdes .of the pole.. Life in the water is .enormous, more abundant ‘sven’than in’ tropical waters, but not equal’"to. the number of southern 'specias in variety. “The facts brought' back by the arotic- explorer flll up: some of the blank piges in the ltves of the birds ‘and animals of North Amertea.: There | | 0.000 square miles in ! | and meteorological conditions at the | top of the world, facts relating to the geology, physiography, topography of that part of our globe. These and the knowledge of the ways and cus- | toms of the natives who have lived there for thousands of years are all | of inestimable value. “They justify the expenditure of monay which leads to the accumula- | tion of knowledge upon which no one can place a value, for it is beyond dollars and cents. “Arctic _literature alone Justifies , the expenditure of every cent. Per- haps the most stirring tale of all is found fn the annals of Capt. Scott There we have the greatest plcture 'in all arctlc and antarctic history— | that of Capt. Scott and his men stand- ing at the ‘south pole with their | faces black with frost. They had walked the whole distance of 700 miles; had pulled thelr sledges up ovar the great antarctic lce cap to a height c¢f 10,000 feet “Although they had won out. they were defeatsd men. There in sight was the Nuorwegian flag. planted cue month hefore by Amundsen. They tegan their jong homeward journey plodding wearily back toward their hut at the edge of the great ice bar- rier. A blizzard came on. They were only twenty miles from a big cache of food. But strength had failed und there they lay n their tent listening to the roar of the wind and drifting ! snow. o ox % €6 WNE man by the name of Ulual.' with badly frosted face. fingers | and feet. had been struggling for days to keep up with the party and was often assisted by his companions He knew that if he persisted in go- ing on they would continue to sacri- fica themselves to help him *“Addressing the leader. he said. I hope I won't wake up in the morning.’ He did wake up but his mind was mads up. He turned to Capt. Scott and sald, ‘I am going out for & short tme' He walked away. disappear- ing in the drifting snows. He did his best that his companions might reach home. “Months later three remaining men Scott, Bowers and Wilson. were found frozen, buried beneath the folds of their tent “The name of Oates will live| through the years to awaken in the | heart of every boy the best there is! in him “In our forthcoming expedition we are not attempting any circus stunt but have mapped out a defluite pr gram of research | “The Carnegie lustitute again isi sending its representative, Richard: Goddard of Winthrop, Mass.. to make 2 study of terrestrial magnetism and atmospheric electricity. We also in- | tend to study ornithology, glaciology | and botany and to obtain a Eeries of | educational photographs of bird and animal lite ' “In addition, millions of radio users will be interested in our radio ex- periment in seeking to keep in cen-| { stant communication ‘with the outside | world through the aurora or north- ern lights. Many experts have con- | tended that this is impossible. This cxperiment should eliminate spe { tion 2nd substitute certainty “We Lope that our radio experi- ments and study of atmospheric elec- tricity will help to throw some further light on the effect of atmos- | pheric conditions on radlo reception | &ad transmission . “Ihope I have at least partially an- | swered the question as to why men ! g0 north for exploration.” Yard and Pound. ~HE British standards of weight and measure, the pound and the | vard, respectively. are made the sub- | Jects of an interesting ceremony | Which, every twenty vears, occurs at | | the Palace of Westminster. i Immured in the wall seat of the | blank window, on the right side of | the second landing of ths public] staircase leading from the lowrr' | walting hall of the house of commone !up to the committee rooms, are the | { parliamentary copies of the imperial | |standards of welght and measure | They were deposited in this place in | the year 1853, soon after the new pal- | ace of Westminster had been opened. | | They consist of the standard yard measure, made of an alloy of copper, tin and sinc. and the standard pound | welght, made of platinum. The imperial yard and pound, com posed of similar metals to the copies, are preserved in the standards de-! partment, where they are kept in an especially made fireproof iron safe, secured by two locks. These meas Iural are protected most carefully against the effects of atmospheric |corrosion and attrition. The vard | rests upon eight equidistant rollers in a compound lever frame, so ar ranged as to equalize the pressure at ! the several points of support, while | reducing its flexure to a mintmun, | The pound is wrapped in filter paper and inserted in a light silver gilt case, which s placed in a solid | bronze box, the 1id of the box being | securea by four screws. There are five parliamentary copies of the standard, one at the Palace of | Westminster, as described, and others at the royal mint, the Roya! Observa- ltory at Greenwich, the. rooms of the Royal Soclety and the standards office. The four last named are com- pared with each other once in every |ten vears, and once in every twenty years with the imperial standards, when, also, the coples of the Palace of Westminster are compared. The cersmony is conducted under the auspices of the speaker of the house of commons, assisted by minis- nd officials of the standards of- The ceremony is quite an' im- rightly should be. Green Gutta-Percha. TH!S substance is now obtained from the leaves of the caout- chouc tree and is sald to be more durable than that procured by cut- ting into the stem of the tres. Unlike the ordinary product, it does not re- quire an expensive prooess of purifi- eation, 8o that its cost is cheapened. In France and elsewhere green gutta- percha has been emplored ‘tn the con- #a7s... The' are facis pertaining to the physical gtruction of submarine cables. INGTO. N‘ D. (7... JiU 7. E 1 1923—PART What Kind of ap Embassy Building in Paris Can United States Buy With Its $300,000°? Other Governments Have Set the Pace and This Country Must Have Home Which Will ot Suffer by Comparison—Six of Ten Embassies in French Capital Are Owned by Respective For- eign Governments—Seven Other Powers Have Handsome Properties for Legations—British Embassy. Bought for Song, Now Worth Three Millions. BY STERLING HEILIG PARIS, June 10. | s American flag I8 tired of | ¢ Gn the move in rented houses!™ Such of the embassy comm home, to repo Der, 1909 The commission made no secret of its concluslons hie last words n. to Congress, In Novem- wer as it sailed | an embassy flag In our o e E rence Jones, t man. “Every citizen should same pride and the same rignts in it as in the White House at Washington.” That was 3 Long before (for thirty years past, in my own experfence) it was the senti- ment of evers American ten days in Pars. Our embassy wae ail over the town “\Whera should be hous ovember, is the American estion ran. “Don't know,"” “He used to rent But BRITISH EMB! i | | the Rue de Galiles it had moved to the | have frozen the new, timid element, added a small building to it, the place | Avenue Kleber. The ambassgdor lived, personally, in the Rue Francois Premier. These fucts In your note book soon got out of date. At the Avenue Kieber they sent you to the Rue de Challl but the ambassador—a rich man, al- ways—rented privately a furnished mansion in the Avenue d’Eylau, or In | ture mbassa- GERMAN EMBASSY IN PARIS. and awe-inspiring siting foreigners from all over the world than even those of the neigh- boring French White House lwok you, the pace is set. A Paris embagsy without magnificent. old for- est garden in mid-Paris lacks a fea- the first-class, uow become essential. If this seem exaggeration consider one deta How, otherwise, British embassy have arrived at th magnificent social ing—veritable revolution fn its history—which ral- lics all that is alive and ‘strong the best things for Britain these days? Con rce goes to the British em- bassy—=social] # at home at the British embassy! 1 cannot go further into this great matter; but the thing is monumental, reassuring, wafe and prosperous. The garden parties did ft. Cramped in formal drawing rooms, the stiff, old aristo- cratie element which formerly ab- sorbed the emba: ‘s social life would Y IN PARIS. 1 even without meaning to do so— which would not have been cgrtain Germany, after the Franco-Prus- | sian war, saw that the palace Prince Eugene, so called, had noble | court of honor and fine garden. France aocepted. | to Parisians and|ited em Without its garden parties. could the | egain property ot estimated at Ger- | property ssies of foreign powers. them own their own sa ' houses. Seven other powe have bought handsome properties their legations. and six of ar These real estate owners are Grea: Italy. German Denmark, Holland. Hu Poland. Siam. Spaln Switzerland Holland last year picked up a bar- which it h modeled. lts present 000—ahout $150.000 profit already, and Paris real estate prices are only be- ginning their skyward fiight Britain Belgium. gary. Japan Sweden and &ince re- Japan recently hought small house, only for its ambassador's per- gonal residence. $100,000. Put dow land bought a bu vear for chancellery purposes o It worth today 000-—Poland | has nearly doubled her money in less than twelve months Little Siam in 1915 bought a prop- erty for $100,000. Having recentl W ois worth 0 profit. Po- in the last fs estimated at $170,000. 1In s | Switzerland bought a fine place, cheap, for 750.000 francs. Today it is 060 francs. Little Hungary recently bought a for iplomacy. And his own furniture, Place d’lena, or (I|g¢ the figure. Let us not rake up old | “little” Spain. Why, Iittle Spain has don't know which), as now, in the Avenue de Messino. Congress agreed it ought not be so. But Congress was busy, and the flag continued to live in lodglngs. Now, at last, in 1923, a proud day dawns. ONGRESS has appropriated $300,000 C for the purchase of an American ambassador's house in Paris. At last our representative is to be on a par of exterior dignity and downrgiht facility with the ambassadors of other first- class powers. Englishmen do not have to ask their way. Like their fathers and grand- fathers. they know that the same gra clous corner of Old England exists (now, yesterday and tomorrow) in the palace of the Charosts, snapped up by the Duke of Wellington, for & mere song, Just after Waterloo. Today the British embassy, with its grandiose wooded garden in mid- Paris, is worth $3,000,000 cash just as it stands, or threes times tbat for bullding sites. But the British would not sell their embassy for untold gold! Its history, nature and situa- tion. give it oyerwhelming value for British diplomacy. prestige and the strioct business objectives which they stand for. Who-can estimate the prestige of merely the garden parties of the Bri ish embassy—more rich, more scenic * * % % stuff. | cheap after Waterloo!) (The British embassy this—offer Germany today 100 times | house came just spent $500,000 to buy and fur- Only just ynish a proper Spanish ambassadors|koff of the old embassy. and visited in Parfs—not counting that the price she pald for her Paris em- half beautiful, old furniture and tap- ! bassy house, and Germany would | estries are coming up from Seville laugh, laugh, laugh—poor dead-broke | and Madrid. | German | valued at $1,500,000. ‘Germany $100,000 per year just suit- |ably to matntain the German am- { bassador at Constantinople, where he { had magnificently furnished summer | residence, town mansion and a steam yacht! Germany deemed it good busi- | ness. As a fact, has she not still her | hooks on Turkey? I * X * %X 1 AKE Italy. Until the war she had 1Thar embassy in the Rue de Pen- | thievre, crowded,« narrow, if fine old street, but “not imposing enough for the embassy of & first-class power'— to use the words of their embassy commission in 1913! So, Ttaly bought the historic Hotel de Berwick, buflt by the illustrious French warrior, James Fitz-Jam son ofrJames II of England. Toda: the place is worth $1,000,000. Only the garden was not up to Italy’s de- sires. So, they have bought adjoin- ing ground to make their embassy |could be bought b: As a fact, the place fs! Why, just before the war, it cost | Put in a pin in the word “fur- nished.” What can the United States get for its modest $300,0002 I say modest. Would that every congressman would ponder on it! It is modest, when you reflect thut nrop- | er, settled ambassadors' houses have | their chancellery offices grouped | arouna them, in their property, yet not Interfering with the residence of the ambassador for entertaining. For, you know, ambassadors must entertain—how otherwise shall they | accept official invitations” We can't change diplomacy. and say: “Come to the office!” Half the big things are ‘learned, started, guessed at, fostered, interfered with, etc., etc.,, soctally. Also ambassadors must have offices for* routine work. At this momeut the United States is using thirty-two v |rented rooms for the purpose. * K % % there are two great prop- in Paris, which the United States, ow, AN erties toda what it should be—fit to compete with { still at a bargain—real and grandiose Britai In Paris, n ow, there are ten lccted-l embasay properties, possessing every requisite. £300.- | $100,000—there's good | many named a purchase price and |money for a little power which knows | You would smile | what's business in PHOTO SHOWS THE COURT OF HONOR. high-cost of chaser The United Both. T bassies. chased near $1.000 house wi heart It was bu which rose | fav rehitect was practicall M & Loufs-Phil afterward it was the Comte de Pa The fabulo Galliera bought Duchesee do plac PHOTO SHOWS ONLY A PART OF THE GARDEN. vears ag paid ncar { wooded garden, and spent $200,000 on improvements. Then, gave it, gratis, to the Austrian crown |as an emba bullding Neither is recognized bassy house today. The soviets have never had a footing here, place remains, vaguely, imperial te | ritory, cared for by the Baron Mar- $1.00 she sy as an em- the at times by the grand dukes and other: who might willing! agres to its disposition. A building specu- lator could not hope to buy it Both these grand properties have been allowed to run down, since 1914, Neither is in perfect condition—al | though the running down fis merel; | superficial. Considering the trul: ! bargain price at which the United | States might secure either. $15.000 {or $25,000 spent in renovation would | give us a grandiose American um- | bassador's house, on which a sur- prised Congress might discover it | had made $500,000 profit in the next | ten years—and perhaps double. It is rumored that our government | is negotiating with the French re- public for one of tha two propertics, In such case, the ambassador would have both chancellory offices and vast wooded garden giving op lis residence, and .all inside his own high stone walls. e HOSE who mistakenly propose “simplicity” for our embassy in stead of ‘wain display” should re- celve this jolt which they merit— the “display,” which Is essential. has always existed. The United States |has always enjoved it—although our (Continued on Fifth Page.) &