THE FRIENDLY ARCTIC 687 



islands and walk on them but also in the sense that we can easily 

 objectify them through representation on maps. 



The very diversity and volume of the scientific results of the ex- 

 pedition makes the task of summarizing them really hopeless. Mem- 

 bers of the staff would doubtless differ with me, but as they are 

 not writing this particular book but rather one or another of the 

 scientific reports, I shall offer here my opinion that the most valuable 

 result of the expedition will be not any of its concrete achievements 

 but rather the general change in the trend of the world's thought 

 which should follow from a broad consideration of all that was done 

 and of how it was all done. Those who go to China and Turkey 

 are less impressed with the few strange things they see than with 

 the commonplaceness of the general average. It is not only igno- 

 rance but also romance that retreats before the advance of knowl- 

 edge. Every geographic discoverer must plead guilty to making the 

 world poorer in romance. He does so in exact proportion as he 

 makes it richer in knowledge. 



This expedition has contributed materially towards making easy 

 what once was difficult, and safe the things that used to be consid- 

 ered dangerous. It is human nature to undervalue whatever lands are 

 distant and to consider disagreeable whatever is different. But 

 we have brought the North a good deal closer and have made it 

 look more than it used to like Michigan or Switzerland. To the 

 members of our expedition the glamorous and heroic Polar Regions 

 are gone and in their place is a friendly but a commonplace coun- 

 try. To the reader the same will be true in proportion as he suc- 

 ceeds in seeing, either through this narrative or through our technical 

 volumes, that it is the mental attitude of the southerner that makes 

 the North hostile. It is chiefly our unwillingness to change our 

 minds which prevents the North from changing into a country to be 

 used and lived in just like the rest of the world. 



