Stefansson Lectures

If the numbers in all of the audiences that heard the lectures of Vilhjalmur Stefansson, the Arctic explorer, on the Moore Foundation, during the third week of February were added together the total would be somewhere about 5,000. Of course some people went to hear all of Stefansson's five public talks so perhaps not everyone of Hanover's almost 5,000 population may have heard him lecture, but the whole town seemed to be out. Stefansson's friendly voice and mild manners also attracted the children of the town, who came in numbers rivalling the dogs of Hanover when they are all assembled on the village green. He was entertained by Palaeopitus, Gamma Alpha, The Dartmouth Scientific Society, the Graduate Club, and the Outing Club.

Stefansson unlike Cook, the explorer and oil stock promoter, does not like to tell old stories about the Arctic. Instead he rivals the modern biographers in their sceptical, debunking manner of exploding old myths. Hanover learned that esquimos rarely live in igloos, that they never drink oil (some- thing I'd never even heard of) unless bribed to do so by tourists, that esquimo dogs as a breed do not exist, and a great many other things.

Dave Hovey '31 of North Dakota, Vilhjalmur Stefanson's native state, ably covered the lectures for The Dartmouth and turned in this interview with the famous explorer and scientist:

"Many years ago I said that the minimum equipment for the Arctic was good health and a cheerful disposition—that still applies," smiled Vilhjalmur Stefansson during an interview at his suite in the Hanover Inn. He had been asked to comment briefly on the sort of training college men would need to fit themselves for work in the Arctic and to outline some of the opportunities present there. "Another thing to remember is that an adventure is a sign of incompetence. That is another saying of mine that has come to be recognized; Roy Chapman Andrews took it as the motto for his book on the Mongol Desert and Wilkins, in one of his Antarctic dispatches said the same. We all fall short of theoretical perfection but if we could plan our journeys perfectly we would never have any adventures at all. Therefore I have always been somewhat ashamed of the adventures I have had."

He continued by saying that the heroic aspect of polar exploration "is either over now or will have to be transferred to the Antarctic. Most of the civilization of the world is arranged in a circle around the Arctic and therefore the short flying distances between the various centers lie across the Arctic. The Arctic will become so familiar to so many people that you can not long maintain its heroic aspect. However, there is comparatively little commercial power and population in the southern hemisphere and the flying routes between the' inhabited countries do not in any case run across the Antarctic. As a result, the Antarctic is isolated and will not become a flying crossroads so people can give their fancy free play without being hampered by the criticisms of travelers who have been there. The Antarctic, then, may continue to retain its atmosphere of heroism."

Referring more particularly to the special training needed lie said "The probability of finding minerals is the same in the Arctic as anywhere else. There is always a certain room for mining engineers and others in allied fields. The Arctic will probably turn out to be the richest ocean in the world per square mile in food producing power and from the point of view of those who fear the approach of a scarcity of food this is highly important. Oceanographers will be needed, both the purely scientific and the practical worker who can farm the ocean.

REINDEER FARMING

"The production of reindeer meat as a basic industry, one producing food in the locality for its workers, making it cheaper for the other industries to develop, will afford opportunities. This started with the importation of 1280 reindeer 25 years ago and there are now over 760,000 of them. This is another field that is open in the Arctic."

Mr. Stefansson declared himself in favor of developing a country according to its own genius and stated that he did not think the agricultural work now under way, "to make another lowa of the Arctic," would be successful. He believes that the efforts of agricultural workers should be limited to developing the grazing regions.

TRANS-ARCTIC FLIGHTS

In reply to a question on the future of Arctic aviation Mr. Stefansson said that while Peary was the first to advocate flying from the explorer's point of view, "I believe that I was the first to point out that the exploration would only be a step and that eventually the Arctic would be a thoroughfare." Mr. Stefansson pointed out that a flight from New York to Pekin, if trans-Arctic, would save between 2000 and 3000 miles and a flight by the same route would save about 1000 miles between Seattle and Moscow.

He looks upon the flight attempted by-Bert Hassell and Parker Cramer of Rockford, Ill., in which they tried to cross from Rockford to Stockholm, Sweden, via Greenland, as being one of the most significant in recent history. "They were doing something new," he said, "the other flyers have crossed by the old routes, merely showing that we can do by air the same thing that has already been done by steamers. Hassell and Cramer were showing that you could do by air what no steamer could ever do, make use of the great circle principle in flying."

CHICAGO TO BERLIN

In reply to a question as to where the flying routes of the Arctic were most likely to be developed, he said that he believed the first would probably be between Chicago, or some point west of Chicago, and Berlin, Stockholm or Moscow, by way of Baffin Island, Greenland and Iceland. "The reason for that is that you not only save flying distance but the jumps across the ocean are none of them more than 600 miles and most of them less. That means that you can carry a big pay load. You can not carry a pay load from Newfoundland to Ireland because you must carry too much gasoline."

Concluding the interview, Mr. Stefansson characterized the Arctic as"one more pioneer locality. Like all frontiers, it is a bad place for anyone to go to make money. The way to make money is to follow up the pioneer and rob him of what he has developed. The pioneer's life is romantic but poorly paid." But he leaves the impression that it is a life worth living.