Evening Star Newspaper, April 14, 1929, Page 45

Five-Year Drift Around Pole (Continued From Third Page.) fic Coast by rail. A few years ago we reached it by air. Now, leaving aside the agricultural aspect of our Midwest for the moment, suppcse we reasoned that it were little use to study the thou- sands of miles between New York and San Francisco simply because men had proved they could make the journey! “How perilous would be our air mail routes without detailed metcorological knowledge of inland areas! would we know of the aborigines who inhabited oyr land without slow, scien- tific scrutiny of it! What vital links in the story of evolution would we have missed in the Nebraskan dinosaur finds it we'd never taken the timc to look! Think of the fund of information our radio experimenters would lack if inter- coastal observdtions had not been made. “Perhaps to commerce there is little prospect of economic gain in the 2,- 000,000 square miles of unexplored area of the polar sea. And yet the sciences of oceanography, terrestrial physics, { ball on whi How little | ren! ethnology and meteorology must all show great gaps until men study the polar areas as thoroughly as we have studied those in temperate zones.” Another man cpoke of the public in- credulity that Prof. Hobbs could gain anything of value from his tiny out- post on the Greenland ice cap last Winter. And yet, he declared, if there; were a couple of dozen such outposts around the North Pole for 24 montks at a stretch we might solve the myste'ry of our North Atlantic weather maps. Outpost to Be on Ship. Capt. Bartlett proposes to esta’slish such an outpost aboard a drifting ship. If he is able to raise sufficient fuv.css he will put his vessel in the ice nor'.’awest of Alaska in the Summer of 1930, He will have seven men in his cre & and four in his scientific staff. He w0l have provisions for not less than five years. Should the worst happen ‘and the ship be crushed, he will con/.inue his work from icehouses on the pack. Life- boats will enable him and b s men to escape when they drift clrar of the heavy floes. Aboard the ship will 'be a fully equipped laboratory, much ‘like that Dr. Beebe used on his famous/ Arcturus ex- pedition. Mechanisms for measuring terrestrial magnetism, tidal currents, water depth, salinity the sea and other variables will be "/stalled before the ship goes north. A powerful wireless 'will convey daily . Toutine reports to projyer authorities in the United States. Research labora- tories, such as at the United States Bureau of Standards., thus will be able to capitalize on Capt. Bartlett's work long ere he returns. During the flylr,g months of April and May his shipbard sclentists will be able to co-operate. with such air expe- ditions as Fridtjof Nansen will lead. Summer stations on the shores of the Polar Sea, mann rd by Russian, Danish, Canadian and Norwegian observers, will exchange data “with Bartlett's ship. Laboratory Changes to Be Slow. ‘The floating laboratory will slowly change her position as the ice pack in which she ¥ imprisoned rotates west- ward about, the North Pole. That the ice pack dol’s rotate in this manner was proved by 1ae drift of the ill-fated Jean- nette in 1 0 and of Nansen's Fram in 1893-95, m Wrangell Island she will work west and north until near the Pole. Thence she should meet the cur- rent flowing southward, which should bring her out past East Greenland. Let up, for the moment, put Bart- Jett's scientific aims in terms of human welfare, The fact,is now accepted by meteor- ologists that no complete and accurate ‘weather service is possible without much better Arctic and Antarctic data than we have today. FPor instance, Hobbs | has pointed out that the “poles” of both wirn'd and cold ere not at all identical with the geographical North and South Poles. One wind pole seems to be on the Greenland ice cap. Another may be located over the unknown area that Bartlett will traverse. If these meteorological “poles” or foci, from which our bad weather comes, can be located accurately and conditions at them tied up simultaneously with con- ditions at home, then we can find out at once if long-distance weather diag- nosis is practicable. Public Prone to Scorn Weather. ‘The public is accustomed to scorn the weather man’s advice. That is be- cause the public at large thinks of weather in terms of overshoes and golf and Sunday picnics. Weather in an economic sense is the sum total of average conditions over an extended period. To the farmers, railways, theater owners, holiday pro- moters and many others, the average rainfall, wind, all vital factors in net profits and | losses. With such people weather rec- | ords are often more important than bank statements. Take a historic example. Benjamin Franklin described in detail “The year without a Summer.” Crops failed and much commercial machinery was « thrown out of adjustment because the average Summer temperature was far colder than normal. We now know | that the probable eause was a bank of volcanic dust floating about the earth Wwhich cut off the sun's rays. ‘This shows how slight a cause may upset the average weather conditions over a large area for a dangerously long period. Farm records show that there are very serious variations in weather— and resulting dnmlge to crops—from time to time. If these variations were known in advance with any sort of accuracy the farmer might often alter his crops to suit the kind of Summer due. or the severity of cold or -muunt recipitation he could hen Bartleit's observal om are available by radio with simultaneous day-to-day observations in the United . States we may find that it will pay to keep observers in the Far North at sta- tions that heretofore have been con- sidered uninhabitable. Aurora PBorealis Has Part. Early in March of this year Prof. ©Oliver of the University of Pennsylvania announced thmt the\ aurora borealis has a definite association with sun spots. He said in part: “There is 'usu;lly a lag of a dny at least after the spot has passed central meridian of the sun before we have the accompanying magnetic storms Only stein hud krought out his new equa- tions showiig the mathematical blood relationship, so to speak, between grav- itv and electric phenomena. These abstractions may seem a far cry from; the frozen feet and olly mican 'Soouse of the ic elmo And yet it is on & !nundulon of just: ns that most of our mod.- % nke radio and flying, have Bartlett's mummmwfll h—mmumum mnmmumflm- posibility tha ¥ 4. deal of suffering and hardship. | fire!” | just beginning his Northern work. sunshine and snow are t m- | i polar pack some day may become the scurce of a great dell o! the world's cheap power. One look at the globe shows that thc land area and popula- tion of the carth are mostly concen- trated about its northern axis. Of the nearly 2,000,,00,000 people in the world about 1,500,(100,000, or 75 per cent, are clustered on, the upper portion of the 'sh we live. Almost fjeometrically in the ecenter of this population mass lies the vast polar ice pack. This pack is, roughly, 1 ,800 miles in diameter. It is acted on by wind and the tide and ocean cur- t. If the pushing and pulling energy of onily a small 10-mile square of this vast ice; desert could be harnesed, it would Fave to be by some cheap means, such 75 radio. But power by radio is already in sight. Not long ago Mar- coni - reduced the usual 360-degrce sprea d of radiated waves to less than 3 degrizes, and sent a measurable bit of energy several hundred miles, ‘Francmision Would Be Problem. ‘Sapt. Bartlett’s polar drift may cost ©r. the order of $300,000. It may cost §ae lives of some of his men. It will turely take several years and entail But the privations of his men and the dollars of his expense account will be but a nominal sum to pay for the ‘knowledge Bartlett may obtain. Indeed, it he captures only one or two small and isolated facts besides his daily co- operation with home laboratories, his expedition wil have paid for itself sev- eral times over. Bob Bartlett is one of the few sur- viving mariners of the old school. He begins his now famous account of his life: “I have been shipwrecked 12 times. Four times I have seen my own ship sink or be crushed to kindling wood against the rocks. Yet I love the sea as a dog loves its master who clouts it for the discipline of the house.” He was born in_the little fishing vil- lage of Brigus, Newfoundland, about half a century ago. His father com- manded a sealing sessel™in the Winter and Spring and operated the family fishing station at Turnavik, Labrador, during the Summer. Took Schooner at 17. ‘When Bob was only 17 his father turned a fishing schooner over to him. Bob heard his mother protest at the hard crew and rough waters among which her boy had to work. To whicn the canny old father replied: “You can't temper steel in a cool Up to 1898 Bartlett divided his time between sealing at home and wander- ing in tramp ships over the face of the seven seas. He caitied fish, coal, bananas, rum and a score of other car- goes to the seaports of the world. ‘When he got his master’s papers, he fell into the hands of Peary, who \\lns n 1898 he took the Windward to Ellesmere Land and saw Peary carried aboard, both feet frozen and helpless from star- vation. The sight had a curious effect on young Bartlett. “From that moment” he says, “I was determined to see that Peary reached the Pole!” And from that moment he went through every grueling step of the way up to April, 1909, when Peary sent him back at the eighty-eighth parallel of latitude. Stefansson selected Bartlett as skip- per of the Karluk in 1913. Later his \essel ‘was blown into the polar pack in a blizzard east of Point Barrow, Alaska. In the dead of the terrible Arctic Win- ter she was crushed, leaving her crew and scientific staff stranded on the floes in 60 below zero weather, hundreds of miles from the nearest land. Responsibilities Noi Shirked. Bartlett didn't shirk his responsi- bility. He organized the retreat and moved in an orderly manner with inex- perfenced men toward Wrangel Island. When a small group of Englishmen who had been in the Antarctic insisted on a sprint toward Alaska he sadly bowed to their will and let them go. No trace was ever found of this party. Having got his crowd safely over the fearful me north of Wrangel Island. he boldly went on, and at last reached the Siberian coast. After hardships that time and again would have exhausted a weaker and less determined man, he crossed to Alaska and finally secured a small ship with which to rescue those he had left behind. Altogether that Karluk adventure is one of the grand- est tales of the frozen North. War came. Bartlett was at once drafted by the United States Army to look after the New York docks. But the Navy managed to wrest him from her rival service. At noon one day he was a soldier, at 4 pm. the same day a sailor, lieutenant commander, United States Navy. ‘Worker With Distinction. With distinction he commanded and ammunition ships. Long, | hard trips and war-time rations werc no novelty to Bartlett. But the North still called. After a few sealing voyages he bought a little two- masted schooner, the Morrissey. Twice he took George Putnam in her for Summer trips to Greenland. He took Anthony and MacCracken to Siberia last Summer for Eskimo mummies. And | at the present moment he is rigging her for a short voyage to Baffin Bay prior to his great entersrise next year. Living as we do in the warm and well fed luxury of our busy lives, we can only vaguely comprehend what our scientists are doing on the strange frontiers and no-man’s land' of abstract research. And we as a nation are to be con- | gratulated that we will have at our | command men like Bartlett, who are | willing to work for the human race and | not for & daily wage; who have the courage and spirit of high adventure to g0 out and seek the truth that the rest | of us may have better radio sets, safer | transportation, cheaper food and llvesr of greater ease. Wi Nature “says it with modern way of making .+« for color is King. color-for-everything . . & saé see Quality linked with uable, more interesting, and more liveable “Murco” Lifelong Paint slipped gracefully into the new demand of THE SUNDAY STAR, WASHINGTO? New War Against Slavery (Continued From First Pm.) i supreme, his word law. Actually he is much in the position of King John of England, His kingdom is a feudal one. The nobles who pay him fealty are re- mote from the capital and jealous of their hereditary rights and privileges. The; to the crown. Only when traditions come in con- flict would they hesitate as to what course to pursue, Ras Taffari might order one of them put to death without trial and it would be done without rancor, for such things have been done before. To -try to enforce an anti- slavery law upon them would be quite a different matter. ‘The tradition of loyalty to the crown would come in con- flict then with the tradition of slavery, with self-interest strengthening the latter. For centuries the slave trade has been the perquisite of certain noble familles. Its sudden abolition would touch their pride as well as their purse; the former is the Abyssinian’s tenderest spot. Turbulent Land, Living in Past. It is & turbulent, unruly, anachronis- tic land, which lives wholly in the past in the Western reaches which border upon absolute wilderness and is thrent- ened constantly upon the East by the encroachments of civilization. West- ward from the capital it is a land with- out any modern means of communica- tion, a land cut by unbridged rivers, |, a land of flerce tribesmen, whose chief- tains the ruler may dominate only in accordance with tradition. So the slave dhows still slip across the Red Sea from this land whose monarch seeks to placate at the same time the powers constituting the League of Na- tions and the petty potentates whose loyalty alone renders his throne secure, and African slaves still are sold in the markets of Arabia. ‘The proclamation with which Ras ‘Taffari sought to impress upon his sub- jects the gravity of the offense of slave- holding named death as the penalty, but it is not of record that the penalty ever has been imposed, though it is estimated that about one in five of the population of Abyssinia is a slave, In fairness to Abyssinia, however, one should distinguish between slaveholding there, which is very similar to that which still exists over much of Africa, and the vicious sale and exportation of slaves. Also, most of the men behind the slave business in Abyssinia are whites. British Officer Tells of Sale. A British officer of the Kanya Colony, reporting in 1926, within a few months after the issuance of the anti-slavery edict, tells of encountering a woman of rank of Abyssinia who had bought two female slaves for $45 each a few days before. It would have been useless, he said, to tax her with the act, for she would have replied that she merely had paid their former employer a bounty to release them and that she intended to pay them wages. For years the Kanya Colony has been under great expense because of slave- hunting expeditions from Abyssinia, but within the last two or three yea these are said to have fallen off greatly. Gradually, it is said, the Abyssinian slave business is shrinking. Some two or three thousand slaves actually have been freed. However, in the district of which Abyssinia may be considered a part, which embraces both shores of the Red Sea and a good part of Northern Cen- tral and Eastern Africa, it was estimat- ed in 1926 that 30,000 human beings were traded each year. Many of them are Moslem blacks from the interior of Africa, and they conform to custom rather -than | Pp] ‘Tibet, Afghanistan, Hejaz and Morocco are other piaces in which slavery is said still to exist. Only within the .Isat year or 50 has it been abolished officially in Southern China, Nepal, Burma and Sierra Leone, a British protectorate, but there is doubt as to the efficacy of the order of abolition in some of these laces. In 1927 the German Minister at Kabul, Afghanistan, was compelled to pay a fabulous sum to save a German woman from going to the auction block., She had been married some years before to an Afghan who then was a resident of Berlin. He returned to Afghanistan, taking his bride with him, and died there. By the law of the land all his property, including his wife, was in- herited by his brother. The widow re- fused to marry‘the brother, and he, as was his right, proposed to sell her at auction. The Moslem World Congress held at Mecca in the Summer of 1926 adopted a resolution denouncing slavery, partic- ularly the enslavement of Moslems by other Moslems, and this, it is believed, eventually may do much to discourage the practice. Lady Simon Helps Work. Lady Simon, wife of Sir John Simon, British Liberal leader, was the one who revealed the conditions prevailing in Sierra Leone, where be'.ween 200,000 and 250,000 household ‘slaves were held at the time, though field slavery, it was Trade-in on Your Old Refrigerator $1.00 Cash Delivers Any Refrigerator No. 1 Top Lift. . No. 2 Side Icer. . No. 3 Side Icer. . No. 4 Porcelain Lined may leave their homes.nominally free, though held in a kind of feudal serf- dom, in the train of their master on a | pligrimage to Mecca. The expenses of the trip, however, may exceed the estimate of their master, and in order | to return to his home in proper style | N he may be compelled to sell some of | his retainers. Naval Problem Is Difficult. The frequency of such pilgrimages | adds to the difficulty of naval forces in { the Red Sea, as it is exceedingly diffi- | cult to tell offhand whether a dhow is | carrying Moslems bound for their shrine | or a cargo of slaves bound for the' markets of Arabia. Interferences with | a band of pilgrims is something to he nvolded \\\\\\ TAKES 3 SECONDS to stop painful Corn O excuse for painful corns and | calluses, Cnly one drop of this amazing liquid eases them scien- tifically. Deadens pain in 3 seconds. Then corn shrivels up so you can peel it off. Millions use it on doc- tors’ advice. Beware. of imitations. Get the real “Gets-It” — for sale everywhere, “GETS-IT,” Inc., Chi- cago, U. S. A, GETS-IT color” and that's the your home more val- . because “MURCO” always has been beautiful, always has been durable . . . and now, more than ever before “MURCO?” is the choice’ of people who like to Ewnumy ' Our Experts will M tell M anything you wish to know about paint. E. J. Murphy Co., Inc. m‘tzgu . N.W. - Main 2477 5-Piece Unfinished Breakfast Set $5.00 o Maxwell's$ . C said, did not cxist. These slaves have now been freed by law, though some slaves are still held there illegally. Persia abolished slavery last year. ithough nominally outlawed in China, slavery still exists there. There Is, therefore, good cause for the adoption of the slavery convention for its own sake. Something of the kind is necessary before the governments of France, Italy and Great Britain, whose possessions intervene between Abyssinia and the Red Sea, can co-operate effici- ently to attack the trade in its vulner- able spot—at sea. The vessels used by the traders are of shallow draft and, 1{ sighted by a gunboat, make for shore. If the gunboat is flying the French colors the dhow will strive to reach Italian or British territorial waters, and it is & headstrong commander who will pursue and fire upon him there, know- ing that by the time he lays his ship alongside the evidence will have vanish- ed and the trader will complain bitterly to the vemmenz whose neutrality has been violated. Understanding May Be Reached. With the ald of the slavery conven- tion an understanding among the powers concerned may be reached which will glve gunboat commanders more latitude and eventually make the Red Sea slave traffic unprofitable. By the time this is accomplished sentiment in interior Abyssinia may be changing. These things were in the minds of the men who put the slavery convention :hrouch, but they looked still farther suffering and injustice in many remote corners of the world, and, until the League of Nations came into being, either had to acquiesce for the uke Offer $14.75 ..$19.75 .$24.75 Deduct $5 for Your Old Box 10-Piece Bedroom Cutfit, *119 A charming Suite of good workmanship, of Gumwood. Suite includes Dresser, Vanity, Chest and Bow-end Bed. A comfortable Spring, Mattress, Chair, Bench They are men who have seen | He has an 3 APRIL 14, 1920 PART' of the immediate good they might ac- complish ©r protest and lose their usefulness immediately. They ‘are the missionaries of the world, fighting still against human cruelty, but now with some ‘hope of success. “Sometimes, in the past,” said Dr. A. L. Warnshuis, who as secretary in New York of the International Missionary Councl, is a leader in the movement, “the missionary has found himself in a very difficult situation. He has seen cruelty and injustice practiced upon natives by the representatives of the government whose guest, in a manner of speaking, he is. What should he do? If he followed his inclination and spoke out, protesting against what he saw, he was ejected. His usefulnes to the natives was ended; his own career was very likely shattered.” Boards and Council Now Act. Now things are done differently. The missionary reports to his local board what he has seen. The local board re- ports to the national board and so it comes at last to the International Mis- slonary Council. With information com- | ing before it from so many sources this body is able to correlate various re- ports and docket them and determine their significance, decide whether this or that is a sporadic incident or a link in a chain, Before he came to New York in 1925 Dr. Warnshuis was secretary of the In- ternational Missionary Council in Lon- don for four years, He visits Geneva. acquaintance, amounting in many lnsunws to friendship, with men who represent their countries with the League of Nations. They know him and they trust him, and he knows them and deals with them as men and friends, not as diplomats. It is in this manner that the League of Nations is being impelled gradually to regard from an international view- point the development of Africa. n 15 a continent which seems doomed to speedy exploitation. The question is whether that exploitation shall take place ruthlessly, unplanned, according to the whims of individuals and the greed of corporations, or shall be gov- erned by a sense of internationajism preventing the rough imposition of a|gd materialistic civilization upon a some- what indolent and altogether ignorant barbarism. Evils Already Are Apparent. The evils resulting from hasty and unconsidered exploitation already are apparent. Among the gravest is thought to be that of forced labor. The evil of slavery was diminished by the impact of civilization. It probably was only a question of time before it would be eliminated quite naturally, but that | time still was remote. The missionaries had hoped that forced labor and slavery could be linked together and together consigned to limbo. But they found that govern- ments which saw no practical difficulty | =" in frowning severely and publicly upon slavery feared that a similar grimace in the directtion of forced labor ml(ht be embarrassing. Economic or military necessity de- manded the opening of certain tra which were peopled by tribes too tndo— lent or too sullen at the invasion of the whites to co-operate volununly ‘The end to be accomplished seemed impor- tant and preulng only by involuntary it’s worth $30 Let us help you modernize your home! J { operation could roads be bullt or ainage canals dug. Therefore the slavery convention of Gt neva was somewhat eqtifvocal regard- ; forced labor, and countenanced it 7 lal or, for the missionaries will not for- . Their determination is that the dd selopment of Africa shall proceed alt ng less bloody lines than the d:- opment of the two Americas. That is why they regard the action %en by the Senate in February as pqmculnly important. It gave them a new ally, one which they hardly had ddred to hope would give assent so red dily to a proposition put forward by thy League of Nations. 2Che slavery convention of the League is§the first convention of that body to be\ratified by the United States Senate. action will impress the League with theywisdom of the program upon which the .missionaries have combined. It is an_Mdication of the kind of measure thie will gain the approval of the d; States. Allowance on Any Offer o)W Living, Dining, Bedroom "85 Allowance | What Have You? 10s Worth $30! Whether its an old bedroom outft, a worn-out | living-room suite, odd pieces or whatever old furniture you have . in Maxwell’s Trade-in Allowance Event! pring or Mattress This Bed Spring and Mattress Complete, $15.95 No. 2 \Special Mattress. $37.57 value. cial at .... Mattress. Regular $19.75 value. 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