be called, without derogation, a political theologian. I mean that he cleaves to the principle of the Establishment, holding it a cardinal mistake for the State not to be officially connected with religion. Sir William Harcourt used to say that he was the last of the Erastians; but he reckoned without Mr. St. Loe Strachey, and also, I might add, without rural inhabitants all over England whose voice is barely articulate in synods, assemblies and conferences.

Among the objects of Mr. Strachey's admiration in history I should name in particular Halifax the 'Trimmer '-that political philosopher of the Restoration who adapted himself not because he wished to trim his sails to fickle political breezes, but because he believed, as a matter of principle, in 'trimming the boat' and keeping the ship of state on an even keel. If ' Whig' seems too dim a phrase to use to-day, I would say that Mr. Strachey is a Conservative Democrat. He does not believe in change for the sake of change, but he does believe in democracy for its own sake. He has never regarded rule by the people as acceptable only because it is inevitable'; he looks upon it as an ennobling thing in itself, raising men to a level of self-respect and competence they could reach in no other way. The reality of his conviction is perhaps best proved by his scorn for those who call themselves Democrats but are not really Democrats-men who fear nothing so much as the will of the people and try to defeat it when it happens to be opposed to their own by direct action' and other short cuts. He recognises that freedom to decide involves freedom to be wrong; but he has a handsome belief in the wholesomeness of public opinion in the long run. He would like nothing better than to place the political veto finally and formally in the hands of the people by means of the Referendum.

Mr. Strachey's friendship for America began in a boy's reverence for Abraham Lincoln, and it was continued by personal knowledge and appreciation of John Hay and Roosevelt. In Lincoln he has always seen what he once described to me as 'the perfect Anglo-Saxon mind-a compound of tolerance, humour and a love of justice.' Mr. Strachey has been accused of being 'too American,' yet I have known him turn on America, as a man who feels deeply might turn on a friend, and lash out at her on the subject of lynchings.

Among his exemplars in modern politics I would select the late Lord Cromer, who wrote regularly for the Spectator in his last few years, and the late Duke of Devonshire.

Let me mention a few other causes which it has been characteristic of Mr. Strachey to support: Free Trade; National Service (as the only simultaneous cure for want of military knowledge and an undesirable militaristic spirit); publicity (as a cure

for most evils); and such a standard of delicacy in public life-to say incorruptibility would be to say too little-as would have prevented the acceptance by the Liberal Party managers of a donation from Rhodes on the indirect understanding that Egypt should not be evacuated, and the Marconi investments.

The last thing the Spectator believes in is government by newspaper. It believes, however, that Governments should be treated liberally with the antiseptic of criticism. If it should be said that Mr. Strachey often writes in a pontifical manner, he would be the last to deny it. He must make himself clear at all costs, and that is his way of doing it. Having been associated with him for twenty years, I know and value his loyalty, his sympathy, his humour, his illuminating conversation, his insatiable love of literature, his passion for poetry; and as for his political way of writing, if there is fault to be found, he agrees to the blame already. Once, when he was reproached by a reader, his answer, to my delight, was to quote from the description of the party at Todgers's: "It is chronic, chronic," and with these words Mr. Pecksniff fell into the fireplace.'

J. B. ATKINS.

POTENTIAL WEALTH OF THE ARCTIC

VILHJALMUR STEFANSSON may need introduction to the reader, for although he is the greatest of modern Arctic explorers, although he has been loaded with the world's highest honours, he has steadily eschewed the newspaper notoriety that could so easily have been his. Stefansson refuses to be a hero; on the contrary, he claims he has done nothing heroic. His achievements, during a thirteen years' sojourn in the Arctic, he counts as little compared to the gigantic task he has set himself. And that task is, in his own words, to abolish the Arctic regions.'

In his books, The Friendly Arctic and The Northward Course of Empire, Stefansson advances a thesis that is utterly new. It is that that dreaded desolate North is neither dreadful nor desolate; that the famous 'barren lands' are not barren; but that in the womb of the North lies the world's hope of the meat supply of the future, immense promise of mineral and oil wealth, and the best possible aerial route between England and China and Japan.

It must be conceded at once that Stefansson's conclusions are widely different from those of all other explorers. But then his methods were also widely different.

The ordinary explorer went north in a wonderfully equipped ship. He was prepared for hardship. He carried vast stores of English food and clothes and fuel. He believed that death from starvation and exposure was inevitable if he should be unfortunate enough to get separated from his base and supplies. And the expeditions that did get so separated frequently died. Even when they remained on their ship scurvy often claimed them as victims. The average scientific expedition, also, was a fleeting, furtive affair of a few months, a flying visit to a zone of terrible danger and hardship.

In the face of the experience of these famous explorers, whom the world has delighted to honour, the Stefansson method seems incredible. For Stefansson relied upon no 'base' nor comfortable ship. He made his home in tent or snow house, just where it suited him. Unlike Nansen and Johanssen in their journey over sea-ice, he carried no supplies, and he reckoned as a misfortune the discovery of a great cache of English food by his men upon one of VOL. XCIV-No. 560

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his expeditions, for the men ate the dried foods and salt meat and developed scurvy, an illness from which it would have been impossible to suffer had they lived upon the fresh meat that the country provided. For both upon land and sea, in winter and summer, Stefansson 'lived on the country,' and even 700 miles north of the Arctic Circle the game resources never failed, and Stefansson and his men and dogs were never hungry.

Nor were they cold. The snow house of the primitive Eskimo is the cosiest dwelling in the world, and can be made within the hour. The skins of the animals Stefansson shot provided him and his companions with clothes: a double suit of furs, the under one with the fur turned inward, and the top one, with the fur turned outward, is cold proof. The blubber of seals, and sometimes of Polar bears, furnished fuel for warmth and cooking, and the temperature of the snow house could be quickly raised to 90° F.

Thus for thirteen years Stefansson lived in that 'land of eternal ice and snow,' and he has returned to abolish it utterly. He lived as an Eskimo among Eskimos. More, he became a superEskimo, for to their knowledge and experience he added the skill and acumen and logic of the white man and the scientist. In the course of his travels he found new lands and unknown tribes; but his greatest discovery, for which his name will live, is the new field he has found for progress and enterprise: the new grazing ground that awaits the herdsman, stretching north and ever north, a feeding ground for the cattle of our children's children. Step by step Stefansson proved that that dreaded, heroic North was not desolate but livable, not cruel but lovable, not a closed chapter in the world's history but the promised land of the pioneer.

Stefansson's first discoveries of the commercial value of the North were upon land.

The picture of Arctic lands that we have cherished through the ages is symbolised by their name, 'The Barren Lands,' lands that conjure up in the imagination the bleak tundra, snow-covered in winter, peeping furtively through its white blanket in summer, and vegetated by stunted, coarse brown grass and moss.

But the actual state of affairs, as described by Stefansson, is very different. In Northern Canada there are nearly two million square miles of either prairie or sparsely forested land, more than two million if Alaska be included; and this rolling grass land is better grazing than the 'permanent grazing lands' of Australia, Texas or the Argentine, that are used for stock because they are too dry for cereals.

In summer the prairie is flower-smothered, and in the lowlands the temperature frequently rises above 80° F. and occasionally even to 100° F. in the shade.

The summer is short, five, or perhaps even three, months

furthest north. But never let it be forgotten that the Arctic is the land of midnight sun. Plant life thrives in proportion to the number of hours of sunlight that it receives, and in the Arctic the sun works double time. Under that sweating system the Arctic lands put forth a marvellously luxurious plant growth, giving a ten to one preponderance of flowering plants. Over the gaily hued carpet of flowers hum innumerable insects, and mosquitoes

are a torment.

This flowery, sweltering meadow land is the 'bleak, wind-swept tundra' as it actually exists in summer.

But what when winter comes? Most of us have imagined that snow and ice formed a frozen rampart over the whole face of the Arctic during winter.

But here again Stefansson has remarkable information to offer, for in the course of twelve winters in the Arctic he found that the redoubtable snowfall is never so heavy as in the Highlands of Scotland. And the blades of prairie grass can be seen sticking up through it in many places. There are no glaciers in Northern Alaska and Northern Canada; hence there is no ice-cap nor ́ perpetual snow.' The temperature at the North Pole would be seldom lower than 60° F. below zero, and on the north coast of Alaska and Canada the lowest temperature in winter is rarely below 46° F. below zero, and has never been lower than 54° F., whereas in Montana, Manitoba and Dakota (settled countries with prosperous cities, where people go about their ordinary business) the minimum temperatures range from 55° F. to 68° F. below zero.

In The Northward Course of Empire Stefansson explains in detail the reason for this apparent paradox. But in a short article the fact can merely be stated: the minimum cold at the North Pole and in the Arctic is not so low as in the interior of Asia and North America, in the so-called 'temperate zone.' Hence we bid good-bye to that 'land of eternal ice and snow.' Good-bye also must we bid to that picture of a halfstarved, solitary reindeer grubbing about under a snow-drift for a bite of moss. So rich and plentiful is the food just below the snow's surface that vast herds of caribou (wild reindeer), herds that can only be computed in hundreds of thousands or reckoned in square miles, rove the Arctic prairies.

The domestication of these animals has already been started in Alaska, with astonishing success. Reindeer need no herding and no shelter; they find their own food. The herd doubles in three years. Reindeer meat is already a delicacy upon the world's markets, fetching higher prices than beef. In one 20,000 herd of North-West Alaska only three beasts were lost in five years to their only enemies, wolves. A herd of 10,000 head can be looked