332 FOLLOW THE WHALE 



whales stashed safely away somewhere, nature will be able to keep 

 working to fill up the vacuum we create in other areas. The danger 

 is that we may already be tapping the last remaining reservoirs of 

 this basic breeding stock, so that even the present quota permitted 

 to be killed will defeat all nature's devices to fill the vacuum with 

 whales. 



This is perfectly obvious to anybody, and has for long been ap- 

 preciated by whalemen, even the chaser captains, who are paid by 

 the number of whales they kill. But those most concerned still adopt 

 one or other of two quite contrary attitudes towards the problem. 

 One may be stated simply as: "Let's kill as many whales as we can 

 as quickly as possible and get as much cash as we can while they 

 last"; the other may be summed up as: "Let's cut down our annual 

 take, and thus our immediate returns, now, and so be able to keep 

 the job longer or indefinitely, and eventually earn a great deal more." 



The first attitude, most unfortunately, is not quite as silly as it 

 sounds at the present juncture in history, for few people today are 

 sure, in their innermost minds, just what chances they may have of 

 being alive three years hence. In more normal times, if there ever 

 were such, anyone advocating this behavior would be a criminal as 

 well as an ass, because he would be robbing his children for personal 

 gain; but in the present circumstances the likelihood of his or any- 

 body else's children being around to benefit by his refraining from 

 exterminating whales is no more probable than that he himself will 

 be alive to suffer from his stupidity. Nonetheless, the saner and more 

 forward-thinking attitude has fortunately prevailed, spearheaded by 

 the American delegates to the International Whaling Commission 

 sessions, the first of which was called in 1930 and sat in Sandefjord in 

 Norway, and the most vital of which took place in Washington in 

 1946. As we mentioned in the last chapter, it was the Americans who 

 finally not only forced the other signatory powers to ratify the 

 international agreements they had drawn up almost twenty years 

 before, but also got the industry as a whole, at least in some manner, 

 to respect the authority of the Commission's scientific inspectors. 

 There are times, in fact, when what other people often regard as 

 childish "do-goodism" is founded on the greatest good sense and is 

 backed with vigor by the American people though it may be of 



