NEVER AGAIN 575 



survey a route, if then. " Dogs could certainly have come 

 up as far as this," I heard Scott say somewhere under the 

 Cloudmaker, approximately half-way up the glacier, but 

 the best thing you could do with dogs in pressure such as 

 we all experienced on our way down would be to drop 

 them into the nearest chasm. If you can avoid such messes 

 well and good : if not, you must not rely on dogs, and the 

 people who talk of these things have no knowledge. 



If Scott was going up the Beardmore he was probably 

 right not to take dogs : actually he relied on ponies to the 

 foot of the glacier and man-haulage on from that point. 

 Because he relied on ponies he was not able to start before 

 November : the experience of the Depot Journey showed 

 that ponies could not stand the weather conditions before 

 that date. But he could have started earlier if he had 

 taken dogs, in place of ponies, to the foot of the glacier. 

 This would have gained him a few days in his race against 

 the autumn conditions when returning. 



Such tragedies inevitably raise the question, " Is it 

 worth it ? ' What is worth what ? Is life worth risking for 

 a feat, or losing for your country ? To face a thing because 

 it was a feat, and only a feat, was not very attractive to 

 Scott : it had to contain an additional object — knowledge. 

 A feat had even less attraction for Wilson, and it is a most 

 noteworthy thing in the diaries which are contained in this 

 book, that he made no comment when he found that the 

 Norwegians were first at the Pole : it is as though he felt 

 that it did not really matter, as indeed it probably did 

 not. 



It is most desirable that some one should tackle these 

 and kindred questions about polar life. There is a wealth 

 of matter in polar psychology : there are unique factors 

 here, especially the complete isolation, and four months' 

 darkness every year. Even in Mesopotamia a long-suffer- 

 ing nation insisted at last that adequate arrangements must 

 be made to nurse and evacuate the sick and wounded. But 

 at the Poles a man must make up his mind that he may be 

 rotting of scurvy (as Evans was) or living for ten months 

 on half-rations of seal and full rations of ptomaine poison- 



