​VIII

THE CONQUEST OF THE POLES

I HAVE just been over the Fram [the name of Amundsen’s ship]. Captain Amundsen, with his lieutenants, Messrs. Hassel and Wisting both of whom accompanied their chief to the Pole were as courteous and attentive as mortals could possibly be. They showed us all that there was to be seen, told us all that there was to be told, and assisted us in snapping everything that tempted our cameras. Nothing could have been more beautiful than the grace and modesty with which they were receiving, in the form of a perfect stream of congratulatory cablegrams, the plaudits of the world. It was good to walk the decks of the sturdy little vessel that holds the extraordinary record of having penetrated to the farthest north with Nansen and to the farthest south with Amundsen. We raise our hats to the heroic achievements of these hardy Norsemen. What memories rush to mind! What tales of dauntless courage and dogged endurance!

 Our thoughts quit all their ordinary grooves and plunge into fresh realms. We seem to leave the solar system far behind us, and to invade a new universe as we lean against these beaten bulwarks and give ourselves to retrospection. And here, at least, there are no more worlds to conquer. Here, at any rate, progress has reached finality. There are no more poles! None! It is so very rarely that we can cry Ne plus ultra! that we must enjoy the sensation when we can. Peary and Amundsen hold a distinct monopoly. They are entitled to make the most of it. The magnificent achievement of Captain Amundsen has set us all thinking of Arctic and Antarctic exploits. We have been transported in fancy to those lofty and jagged ranges of mountainous ice that have been the despair of adventurers since exploration began. We have shivered in imagination as we have caught glimpses of innumerable ice-floes and of stretching plains of frozen snow. Of Captain Amundsen’s success in the south we know only the bare fact. His book, with graphic detail and description, is a treat with which the future tantalizes us.

 But Amundsen has reminded us of Peary [the American explorer who was the first to reach the North Pole which Amundsen had intended to do], and we have picked up the Commander’s book once more. He tells a great tale. It is good to see that the world cannot withhold its sounding applause from the man who knows exactly where he wants to go, and who never dreams of resting till he gets there. Peary’s book is a classic of excellent leadership. Nansen [the Captain of the Fram] told us long ago that the obstacles that intervened between civilization and the Pole, terrific as they were, were too frail for the dogged and indomitable determination of Peary.

 That prediction has been magnificently vindicated. Commander Peary has taught us that the really successful man is the man who knows how to keep on failing. Failure is life’s high art. He who knows how to fail well will sweep everything before him. Peary kept on failing till the silver crept into his hair; and then, when well over fifty years of age, on stepping-stones of his dead self, he climbed to higher things. Through what Disraeli would have called ‘the hell of failure’ he entered the heaven of his triumph.

 It is ever so. The kingdom of heaven suffereth violence, and the persistent take it by storm. The conqueror is, as Wellington said, the man who never knows when he is beaten. The dust of defeat stings the face of the victor at every step of his onward march. ‘The arms of the Republic’ writes Gibbon, ‘often defeated in battle, were always successful in war.’ ‘As for Gad’ exclaimed the dying Jacob, ‘a troop shall overcome him, but he shall overcome at the last.’ The Cross is the last word in the grim record of the world’s most ghastly failures; it is at the same time the emblem of a victory which shall shame our most radiant dreams. Those whose ears have never heard a paean, and whose brows have never felt the laurel, should ponder well this great romance of Arctic exploration. When God writes Success on any man’s life He often begins to spell it with an ‘f.’ 

 Commander Peary tabulates his difficulties. Speaking generally, these coincided with Amundsen’s, and they were three: (1) there was the difficulty, sometimes almost insuperable, of conveying heavy baggage over steep, ragged, slippery mountains of ice; (2) there was the difficulty presented by the piercing, penetrating, paralysing cold; (3) and there was the difficulty of the dense, depressing darkness the long polar night. In relation to the first of these, however, we must confess that the thought that has haunted us, as we have followed our intrepid voyager, is that, really and truly, these were not the things that deterred, but the things that drove him. Their propelling power was infinitely greater than their repelling power. It is quite certain that if the Poles could have been reached in a sumptuous Pullman car, neither Peary nor Amundsen would have made the trip. It was the stupendous difficulty that lured them on.

 We make an egregious blunder when we try to persuade men that the way to heaven is easy. The statement is false to fact in the first place; and, in the second, there is no responsive chord in human nature which will vibrate to that ignoble note. Hardship has a strange fascination for men. Pizarro knew what he was doing when he traced his line on the sands of Panama, and cried: ‘Comrades, on that side of the line are toil, hunger, nakedness, and drenching storm, desertion, and death; on this side ease and pleasure. Choose, every man! For my part, I go to the south.’ Garibaldi knew what he was doing when he exclaimed: ‘Soldiers, what I offer you is fatigue, danger, struggle, and death; the chill of the cold night in the free air; the intolerable heat beneath the blazing sun; no lodgings, no munitions, no provisions, but forced marches, perilous watch-posts, and the continual struggle with the bayonet against strong batteries. Those who love freedom and their country may follow me.’  Men love to be challenged and taunted and dared. Six thousand men eagerly volunteered to join Captain Scott’s expedition to the South Pole.

 Some holding high and remunerative positions craved to be permitted to swab the decks of the Terra Nova. A captain in a crack cavalry regiment, with five clasps on his uniform, a hero of the South African war, counted it an honour to perform the most menial duties at a salary of a shilling a month. Yes, Pizarro and Garibaldi, Peary and Scott knew what they were doing. They were obeying the surest instinct in the genius of leadership; for they were following Him who said: ‘If any man will come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross daily, and follow Me; for whosoever shall save his life shall lose it, but whosoever shall lose his life for My sake, the same shall save it.’ On the road to Golgotha, the Saviour challenged the daring among men, and the heroes of all the ages have in consequence trooped to His standard.

 But the colossal obstacles have often to be surmounted, Peary tells us, in the cruel cold and the dense darkness. And such cold! It is surely an allegory. Many a man feels that the task assigned him would be difficult enough in itself; but, in the chilling and disheartening atmosphere in which he has to perform it, it seems impossible. Bad enough, thought Benaiah, to fight a lion; but a lion in a pit! And a lion in a pit on a snowy day! Hard enough to persevere in well-doing when inspired by sweet whispers of gratitude, and cheered by the warm breath of sympathy. But misunderstood and unappreciated! There are millions who have discovered, with Peary, that life’s heaviest loads have to be borne in the most nipping and frigid atmosphere.

And the darkness! Nobody knows what darkness is, Peary tells us, unless he has experienced an Arctic night. Week after week, with no illuming ray, the blackness seems to soak into one’s very soul. But here our explorer is mistaken. There are many who have never been within thousands of miles of the Pole who nevertheless take up every morning their heavy burdens and bear them through an atmosphere more chilling than that of Arctic latitudes, and amidst darkness compared with which an Arctic night is brilliant. For there is no gloom like the petrifying gloom of mystery. The sorrows of all time reached their climax in the Man of Sorrows; and the anguish of the Christ reached it climax on the cross. And in the awful heart of that anguish there was darkness; and out from the darkness emerged the expression of eternal mystery, ‘My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken me?’ The horror of the ages is concentrated in that fearful ‘Why?’ And with an unanswered ‘Why?’ upon his dumb lips, many a Christian follows his Lord in the dark.

 I have said that Peary’s book is a classic of distinguished leadership. This reminds me of the finest thing in the volume. The explorer makes a noble boast. In the course of his life he has led hundreds of men among Arctic foxes and Polar bears. And, save for shipping accidents that might have happened in any zone, he has brought them all safely back. There could be no more eloquent testimony to his shrewd foresight, his unfailing diligence, and his almost fond unselfishness, than that. Of nothing is he more proud. But Peary’s leadership is modelled on a greater. What though at times the burdens of life seem crushing? What though the atmosphere seem paralysing? What though the darkness seem appalling? He leads on. He has felt the darkness and the cold. The responsibility is, after all, in the last resort, upon the leader. And, with unerring wisdom and beautiful accuracy of judgment, He picks out the perilous path and apportions the difficult tasks to the well-known potentialities of His followers. ‘Of those whom Thou hast given Me’ He says, ‘I have lost none.’ Commander Peary’s great book has taught us that the wise leader sets an infinite value on the welfare of his most lowly follower; and that every task is allotted in the light of that lofty estimate.

(Dr.) F.W. Boreham