AMUNDSEN'S ATTAINMENT OF THE SOUTH POLE 
205 
likely to arise a time when these fortifi- 
cations, backed up by the American navy, 
will fail to command a proper and whole- 
some respect from other nations. 
It is rather remarkable that the only 
objections that have been raised to forti- 
fying the canal have come from our own 
people. To have made it neutral would 
have placed the United States in a 
peculiar position in case of war. Either 
we would have had to refrain from 
using it for our war ships, or else we 
would have had to permit the enemy to 
use it on equal terms. That would have 
meant that good American citizens, oper- 
ating the canal, might have been forced 
to put the enemy's fleet through the 
waterway — practically compelled to com- 
mit a sort of legalized treason against 
their own government by giving aid and 
comfort to the enemy. 
A NI;W COMMERCIAL MAP 
As intimated in the beginning, won- 
derful and world-affectinsr results must 
grow out of the completion of the canal. 
Cities that are today the way stations on 
the international routes ot trade will 
grow up into veritable metropolitan com- 
munities. Other cities which are su- 
preme today may fall back into second 
place a generation hence. When the 
Turks captured Constantinople and cut 
off the trade between the Orient and 
the Occident, Columbus sailed in search 
of a new passage to India and discovered 
a new world. When the Panama Canal 
is completed and the generation passed 
during which the highways of the oceans 
will be changed, the United States will 
have discovered a new world of inter- 
national trade, which will so link and 
bind the nations together that the great 
waterway, built primarily for defense, 
will become one of the greatest factors 
in the promotion of universal peace, and 
the prophecy about swords being beaten 
into plowshares and spears into pruning- 
hooks will have been brought nearer to 
fulfillment. 
AMUNDSEN'S ATTAINMENT OF THE 
SOUTH POLE 
THIS page was already on the press 
when the cable came from New 
Zealand announcing the attain- 
ment of the South Pole by Roald Amund- 
sen, December 14-17, 191 1. Amundsen 
is a gold medalist of the National Geo- 
graphic Society, having been awarded the 
Hubbard Medal of the Society for his 
achievement of the Northwest Passage 
from the Atlantic to the Pacific, and for 
his explorations and observations on that 
remarkable voyage of discovery. The 
Society rejoices at his well-earned suc- 
cess in attaining the coveted goal at the 
far South. 
Many geographers had feared that 
Amundsen would yield to the tempta- 
tion of following, for a considerable part 
of the way to the South Pole, the route 
previously discovered and opened by 
Shackleton ; but his account shows that 
he was not satisfied to do this, and in 
consequence he has made discoveries and 
surveys that are entirely new. 
The whole distance traversed by him — 
approximately 700 miles from his base, 
where he moored his ship to ice-front — 
to the pole itself, appears to have been 
across previously untraversed and un- 
known ice and land. He has defined the 
eastern and southern boundaries of the 
Great Ice Barrier, that vast plain of 
floating ice which flows down from the 
great Antarctic Continent, and whose 
western boundary had been defined pre- 
viously by Shackleton. This enormous 
glacial ice plain is one of the wonders 
of the world. It is a solid mass of ice, 
floating for the most part, approximately 
800 to 1,600 feet thick, and covering an 
area of about 100,000 square miles, or 
considerably larger than New York, 
Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and 
Vermont combined. 
Amundsen found traveling across the 
barrier comparatively easy. He marched 
382 geographical miles due south across 
the plain until he was confronted by the 
