Ice Pole

There remains to this day a place on earth which eye hath not seen. It is 84DEG north, longitude 160DEG, 400 miles from the North Pole (90DEG north, longitude 00DEG). is variously known as the Ice Pole, or the Inaccessible Pole or the Pole of Relative Inaccessibility. Thither would men go: for one reason, because it is probably the world's most ungetatable place; for another, because it may be the undomesticated capital of a valuable province.

The challenge is clear. Last week the trumpet of daring was pressed to the lips of heroism and sounded a venture. In an airplane Captain George Hubert Wilkins will undertake next spring a direct passage from Point Barrow in Alaska over the Ice Pole to Spitzbergen--slightly less than 1,900 miles of Arctic. Vilhjalmur Stefansson, veteran North rider, on whose last trip Captain Wilkins served as second in command, will devote himself to the details of preparation.

The official backers are the American Geographical Society, the Detroit Aviation Society and the North American Newspaper Alliance, represented by the following committee:

Chairman, William B. Mayo of Detroit, chief engineer and general manager of the Ford Motor Co.; general manager, E. S. Evans of Detroit, engineer and capitalist; Dr. Isaiah Bowman of Manhattan, director of the American Geographical Society; Vilhjalmur Stefansson of Manhattan, explorer; Loring Pickering of Manhattan, general manager of the North American Newspaper Alliance; Capt. George Hubert Wilkins, Australian explorer and aviator; Harold H. Emmons of Detroit, attorney and sportsman explorer.

A total of $150,000 is available, towards which Captain Wilkins has been the largest contributor. Some time between March 20 and May 1, the plane--a Fokker with three Wright whirlwind air-cooled motors--is due to hop off.

Few will deny the possibility that eventually the Arctic regions will be filled with lanes of human traffic. If Captain Wilkins can fly successfully from land to land across the polar desert, he will hasten the eventuality. That is the great utilitarian purpose of the venture. The sporting and the scientific purposes converge on the Ice Pole, which is farther distant from any port than any other spot in the Arctic, and which for this reason is more difficult of access even than the North Pole itself. Scientifically, there are reasons for supposing that the Ice Pole is surrounded by land. Geese, gulls, eider ducks fly northward from Alaska and Siberia in early summer and return with fledglings. Prevailing winds indicate high ground in the direction of the Ice Pole, as do the Arctic tides as charted by Harris. Whaling stories contribute the authority of legend to the guesswork of science. If there is land and if it is attached to the U. S., this country will possess the Hawaii, the Suez, the Yap of the predestined north routes. So enters the theme of patriotism. Nor is there lacking the aria of commercial enterprise--for the flight will be named the Detroit Arctic Expedition.

Captain Wilkins is an Australian by his papers and a Nomanslander by his instincts. Educated in Sydney to be an engineer, the world first observed him as a motion picture man, when he secured the first front-line close-ups of the Balkan Wars in 1912. He went with Shackleton to the suburbs of the South Pole. He went north with Stefansson. He was a War aviator. These last three years he has been beating through tropical Australia for the British Museum. Last week Captain Wilkins announced that he would act upon Stefansson's theory that a man may live off the Arctic as long as ammunition lasts. For this reason, he will take only two-weeks' supply of food in the planes, quite contrary to Amundsen's practice of taking food sufficient for a return journey by sledge, boat or foot.