94 SECTIONAL ADDRESSES. 



remains unanswered is the adaptability of peoples of European descent 

 to life in the Arctic climate. At present there is little evidence on which 

 to base satisfactory conclusions, for nearly all migration in historic times 

 has been either within the temperate zone or from temperate to tropical. 

 There are few instances of migrations from temperate to polar or even 

 from warmer to cooler climates. 



The problem is one of considerable importance in the future of human 

 settlement for two reasons. First, because there is no real evidence that 

 the white races are suited for the tropics ; that is to say, for permanent 

 racial transference as apart from visits. All the evidence that is conclusive 

 points the other way and suggests that only by a slow process of natural 

 selection can the white races ever find a sure footing in the tropics. 

 Long before that is achieved, the coloured races will have effectively 

 occupied the warm lands. 15 This means that the white races must turn, 

 as in effect they have been turning for several centuries, polewards in 

 their search for new homes. Secondly, the possibility of polar settlements 

 affects, as I have tried to show, the future food production of vast areas 

 which at present enter little into the economic life of the crowded popula- 

 tions of food-importing communities. 



There are plenty of isolated cases to illustrate the healthiness of polar 

 climates and how a man can thrive in the Arctic for a year or several 

 years. But it is unsafe to found faith in polar colonisation on such cases. 

 First, they are almost entirely cases of men, and secondby, of men in the 

 prime of youth and of strong physique and mentality at the outset. 

 Witness the trappers of the Hudson's Bay Company, the fur traders of 

 Siberia, or the adventurers in the K Ion dyke and Yukon goldfields. It 

 has even been argued that because a negro accompanied Peary to the 

 Pole there is no reason why peoples of the tropics should not colonise the 

 Arctic ! 



Successful colonisation entails not merely the maintenance of health 

 and vigour during a shorter or longer stay in the new environment. It 

 demands that race transference can take place and that the transferred 

 population can thrive with undiminished fertility from generation to 

 generation without the infusion of new blood from the mother country. 

 From this point of view the health and energy of women and children 

 is the important consideration. 



The Danes in Greenland are the nearest modern approach to this state 

 of affairs, but though the Danish families thrive during their stay in the 

 North they do not regard Greenland as a permanent home : they are 

 exiles counting the years until they can return to Denmark. At certain 

 of the large mining camps in Spitsbergen there are Norwegian families of 

 several years' uninterrupted residence with bright, healthy children born 

 and reared in the Far North. 



There are, unfortunately, no data bearing on climatic energy in polar 

 regions such as E. Huntington has collected for the United States and some 



15 From this statement it does not of course follow that all regions within the 

 tropics are necessarily uncolonisable by whites, since altitude may in certain places 

 compensate for the ill effects of a tropical climate. Nor does it follow that a few 

 exceptional families may not now and then persist in the tropics for a generation or 

 two, though such instances generally involve the introduction of fresh blood. 



