440 SIEGE OF THE SOUTH POLE 
out risk, but still with far less risk than would be met 
without a thought in a naval engagement, or in say, ten 
years of football. The argument of risk to life is the most 
contemptible ever put forward to cover the deep-rooted 
indifference to the advancement of knowledge underlying 
most excuses of the kind. 
Whenever a reasoned plan of deliberate, systematic 
exploration is undertaken, as some day it may be, it should 
be a point of honour, after selecting a competent com- 
mander — and such men abound — to tell him in general 
terms what he is to try to do, and then leave him a free 
hand as to how he is to do it. When such an explorer 
returns, his work should be tested before he is either 
rewarded or blamed, and there should be no more scruple 
in blaming an explorer who does not do his best than in 
censuring a naval officer who fails in his duty, while the 
rewards for success should be at least as generous in the 
future as they have been in the past. 
Our plan for the completion of exploration is simply 
to substitute systematic for spasmodic methods ; to follow 
up successes and retrieve failures, to make the accomplish- 
ment of the end in view more important than a safe 
return, and above all not to buy a ship or hire a man until 
the means are provided for carrying out the whole scheme 
with every material promise of success. The old method 
has ceased to be satisfactory though it has led to mag- 
nificent incidents. The new method may be said to have 
been already introduced by Mr. Mossman’s two years of 
continuous meteorological and magnetic observations in 
the South Orkneys which seem likely to be followed up 
by the most progressive and scientific of Spanish Ameri- 
cans, the people of the Argentine Republic. 
Now that the Antarctic ships which inaugurated the 
