Evening Star Newspaper, March 23, 1930, Page 85

EDITOR’S NOTE: Just before he sailed away for his latest jaunt into the icelocked Antarctic, Sir Hubert Wilkins, intrepid explorer, granted the following interview. Now that he is return- ing to civilization again, having “checked in” recently at Montevideo, the world may expect shortly to hear more of the benefits to be de- rived from continued exploration and research in the polar areas, as described in the following article. BY EVE GARRETTE. , HAT will be the effect upon civi- lization when the weather man is vested with absolute accuracy and infallibility? What will 4 happen to the farmer, the mer- chant and the traveler by land, air or sea when the day comes that weather reports of “clear and cold” or “rain tomorrow” will be as ac- eurate as astronomical forecasts are today? Sir Hubert Wilkins, intrepid explorer and scientific adventurer, a man whose exploits both in the Arctic and Antarctic have brought him international fame and scientific honors, dedi- cated himself seven years ago to the task of solving the riddle of weather. He believes that it will. be the most epochal economic benefit that science, invention and human ingenuity have yet devised. ‘6T 1% economic benefits to be derived from accurate weather forecasts will have a profound effect upon civilization. If we can forecast conditions so that farmers—the primary producers—will know what kind of crops to plant, when to plant them, whether a particular season will be early or late, wet or dry; if grazers can know just how much stock they can carry on a certain acreage in a certain year, it is going to do much toward the sta- bilization of prices and it will mean a great deal to every one. Prices of food, clothes and merchandise of all kinds are affected vitally by seasonal conditions. “Under our present method of receiving weather reports, T am told they operate with 30 per cent efficiency; great merchants lose thousands and thousands of dollars annually because they have widely advertised sales which happen to fall on rainy days; railroads, trans- portation companies and vacation resorts suffer heavy losses because they have no adequate forecasts on seasons. “Industries of all kinds, engineering and building projects—I might enumerate an end- less list of activities which stand to profit 100 per cent, once weather reports are regulated accurately and seasonal conditions forecast seveal years in advance. It will mean millions of dollars saved to every country and will bring prosperity such as the world has never known. I believe it will lead to the dawn of a new era in civilization.” This forecast by the renowned explorer was made just before he left New York to embark upon his second season of exploration in the Antarctic in meteorology’s behalf, and already he had mentally turned his back upon civiliza- tion and was flying out over the trackless, stormswept wastes of the outposts of the lost, where so many brave and gallant men had dared—and died. Sir Hubert has the strong, sensitive face of a man who dreams big deeds and does them, His «yes are blue and wide-set. He has the thinker's THE SUNDAY STAR, WASHINGTON, D. Polar Conquest to Solve Weather Riddle Sir Hubert Wilkins, Returning From the Antarctic, Outlines Great Economic Advantages That Will Accrue to World’s Business When Mankind Is Fortified With Correct Data on Impending Weather Conditions. C., MARCH 23, 1930. This delicate instrument, which records the atmospheric pressure, temperature and humidity at various altitudes, is sent up on a kite or balloon to collect data on which weather forecasts may be based. brow and his mouth shows temperament and determination. His beard is sandy-hued, his movements are swift and silent—portentous in a man so tall and broad. Add to this a fine simplicity of manner (Wilkins is noted for his unassuming modesty), a soft, clear-cut speech, and you have a picture of a man who is mak- ing world history. s Wilkins won fame overnight by flying over the top of the world—a project which from its inception was one to stir the imagination. Be- yond Point Barrow, farthest point in Alaska, 500 miles beyond Fairbanks, where the rail- road ends, lies the mysterious Arctic—perhaps a lost continent. It was to chart this region and search for that mythical land which was supposed to lie between Point Barrow and the North Pole that he made the flight. It meant flying from Point Barrow to Spitzbergen over 2,200 miles of bleak Arctic wastes which no man had ever seen. Wilkins accomplished it in 215 hours of actual flying—a flight which, ac- cording to the late Roald Amundsen, none other can be compared with. For five days Wilkins and his companion, the late Carl B. Eielson, were marooned on an island off Dead Mans Point, only 25 miles from their goal, where they were forced to land in the midst of a terrific blizzard. Dead Mans Island is a mere speck .in the Arctic waste. There was shelter on Greenley Island for the late Von Huenefeld and his companions, but there was no light house on Dead Mans Island to swave as a beacon for Wilkins and Eielson. They ate and slept in their plane, and after the fiorm blew over calmly proceeded to dig it out of the drifts and fly on toward Spitzbergen. It was a feat unique in aviation history. In proving his contention that the Lost Land region near the North Pole was a myth, Capt. Wilkins made a valuable scientific contribution, SIR HUBERT has spent three years in the Arctic, an area of many millions of square miles of unknown territory, with the direct pur- pose of determining the best points to erect meteorological stations for observing the weather, He is now engaged in making & simi- lar geographical survey by plane of the regions which lie about the South Pole. However, while the Arctic has the fewest storms for an area of its size in the Northern Hemisphere, the Antarctic shore region is the stormiest in the whole world. A great ice barrier encircles the home of the blizzard. The work which Wilkins is undertaking now—that of determin- ing the coastlines and therefore the extent of the continent—is as dargcrous as it is scien- tifically important. He was with Sir Ernest Shackleton’s last expedition inte the Antarctic and was with' him 3 when hé died. He knows what to expect—those bitter-cold, treacherous blizzards which seem to spring suddenly without warning from the desolate wastes and make flying the most haz- ardous means of exploration. But the airplane saves much precious time and is less fatiguing, less arduous than dogsled travel, by which it would take many, many years to accomplish his purpose. Wilkins is determined to uncover the mysteries of the Antarctic by air, map its geography and plan for future meteorological stations as quickly as possible, in order that the world may have better weather prognostica- tions. For seven years it has been the dream of his life and he is willing to enter the very jaws of death, if need be, in order to see it realized. “There must be pioneers to establish Arctic and Antarctic air paths, just as there were pioneers in the early days of the development of the United States,” Sir Hubert explained. “For many years it has been a theory—one advanced by an ancestor of mine in 1643—that if we knew something about polar conditions and could collect observations from those latitudes, we might be able to forecast seasonal changes. That ancestor was James Wilkins, Bishop of Chester, in England. He proposed to the Royal Society of London an investigation of the polar regions. He wrote two books about flying, forecast the submarine and predicted a machine age. Yet he died of a broken heart, hounded from his bishopric as one who delved in witch- craft. I believe that I am simply taking up my heritage and carrying on. “Today radio makes it possible and aircraft travel makes it necessary that nations collect weather data in the greatest storm-breeding area in the world and correlate it with data from other latitudes in order to forecast meteor« ological conditions with reasonable accuraey. With the era of transpolar flying almost upon us, it is of vital importance that the air pilot of the future be advised far in advance of weather conditions, not only &long his route, but also throughout the world, and particularly at high altitudes, so that he may take proper advantage of favorable air currents. “The Arctic Ocean is a small mediterranean body surrounded by a variety of conditions. It is covered by only a thin blanket of ice, averag- ing no more than 15 feet thick, and the bulk of the ice in the Arctic is comparatively small, In the Antarctic we get an exactly opposite condition. We get a continental area covered, we estimate, with ice that has been nearly 3,000 feet thick, but which today is not more than 1,800 feet thick. “Many meteorologists believe that the influ- ence of that ice on the ocean currents is the greatest factor in determining seasonal condi- tions in the Southern Hemisphere. We hope to establish seven stations on the edge of that continental area and five sub-Antarctic islands, and from these stations collect simultaneous observations and submit them for correlation with observations taken in the Arctic, and so get a comprehensive idea of the meteorology of the world. “In working out the business arrangements for that plan in the Antarctic, we estimate that the total cost for a period of 10 yearse which time it will require—will be more than $10,000,000. That sounds like a great sum.to spend for meteorology, but when you consider that it is over a period of 10 years and is to #i-Qontinued on Twenty-second Page