Polar Year

The polar dawn comes in March, sunset in September, noon in June. Last week it was mid-afternoon in the Arctic as all over the world meteorologists, astronomers and geophysicists traveled to work for the Second International Polar Year. Their most exciting assignment was to watch for the effects of the Sun's eclipse on Aug. 31. Then will follow a dull, methodical twelve months of measurements, computations and recordings.

In 1882-83 the First International Polar Year became an event when the northern nations set up a dozen meteorological and geophysical stations in the Arctic regions. One of the two U. S. parties under Lieut. Adolphus Washington Greely reached the then farthest North (83DEG 24'), lost themselves. A relief party found seven survivors, 18 starved corpses. Lieut. Greely survived to become Major General Greely, builder of telegraph and cable lines, a trustee of the National Geographic Society. The parties of the other nations added to Man's knowledge of weather-forecasting, navigation and Earth's electromagnetic behavior. After adding up the results, the nations scheduled another Polar Year in 50 years.

Once the picture of men ringing the Pole like wolves around a campfire excited romantic scientists. But as the Second Polar Year loomed, economy's pinch made many a nation withdraw its cooperation. Niggling legislatures reduced expense accounts. When at last the Polar Year got under way it had become a Terrestrial Year. Instead of ringing only the North Pole with observatories, the massed nations have sent some men to the Antarctic Zone, some to tropic regions. Africa and South America have six stations each. Some 250 men, and a few women, were last week scattered between South Orkney Island off South America and Kraulshaferi, Greenland, between Hooker Island and Point Barrow, Alaska, whose spring icepack was a U. S. cinema villain last week in Igloo (TIME, Aug. 1).

Stations in the farflung line will use identical instruments, to measure wind currents on Earth and high above, to observe clouds and Northern Lights. They must study sunshine, moonshine, skyshine. They will take the temperature of air, earth, water. They will detect characteristics of the Earth's magnetic flux. New will be the research into the nature of radio reception everywhere.

Not only will the polar yearlings have the same instruments; they will use them on concert. At prearranged hours of certain days all the stations will be doing the same thing. Thus at midnight. 2 :00 a. m., 6:00 a. m., 8:00 a. m.. noon. 2:00 p. m., 6:00 p. m. and 8:00 p. m. Greenwich Mean Time on Aug. 9-10, Sept. 13-14, Oct. 11-12, and so on around the calendar of the Polar Year's afternoon twilight, night and morning, each station will waft into the air a big rubber balloon. Hanging from many a balloon will be a small wireless transmitter whose whine will indicate which way the wind blows, to men listening at wireless direction-finders.

The I. S. Polar Year expense account has been cut to $30,000. Of the U. S. observers. Dr. Ralph Belknap, University of Michigan scientist, will be farthest north at the Kraulshafen, Greenland, station. The others will be at Point Barrow and Fairbanks, Alaska. Abandoned are plans for a station in Grant Land where the Northern Lights are thought to originate.

Before getting down to work. Dr. Belknap last week was jaunting in the Arctic. With Marie Peary Stafford, Arctic-born daughter of the discoverer of the North Pole, and her two sons, he went to build a tower of rocks on snow-covered Cape York in northwest Greenland, in Admiral Peary's memory.

Under Captain Robert ("Bob") Bartlett the motored schooner Morrissey bore them through Davis Strait, past Kraulshafen, Greenland, where Dr. Belknap sent two assistants ashore; across Baffin Bay, across Melville Bay. Atop Cape York the jaunters found plenty of rocks but little labor to haul cement and scaffolding up the heights from the Morrissey. Seeking Eskimo helpers, the party went down the hill and over to Thule. a nearby village where lives Hans Nielsen, Danish Governor of the region.

Governor Nielsen's "most thoughtful act," wirelessed Mrs. Stafford to the New York Times last week, "was to lend us as interpreter and guide, old Inughito, who had been mess boy on the Roosevelt with Admiral Peary during her last winter at Cape Sheridan. The meeting between Captain Bob and this faithful native of the old days was a most touching one, as the two men flung their arms about each other in a welcome that came from their hearts.

"Wherever we went the natives came to us, among them Ootah. Admiral Peary's favorite among his hunters and the last of the four Eskimos who stood with him at the North Pole and shared his triumph. All the Eskimos showed almost childlike joy in seeing Admiral Peary's, daughter once more for, as she was born in Greenland, they feel that she belongs to them, and the Admiral's two grandsons also came in for their share of the cordial greetings.

"The transporting of the heavy loads of material up the side of the mountain through wind, rain and the heartbreaking drag of the slush and melting ice calls for hard work and lots of it. . . . Captain Bob Bartlett. . . is on the job all day long, encouraging, joking with them and occasionally rewarding them with a cup of coffee or sugar or tobacco."

In the U. S. Negroes were vexed with this northern idyll. Grumbled The Crisis, race paper: "Deliberate discourtesy. . . No invitation was extended to Mat Henson, the faithful colored companion and servant of Peary and his only comrade when he discovered the Pole. . . . Rude.''

The tower-builders were in a hurry to dedicate their work and get away. Mrs. Stafford wanted time to buy her boys their school clothes. Captain Bartlett wanted to get away before the autumn freeze. Dr. Belknap wanted to get down the Greenland coast to Kraulshafen to get on with his part in the Second International Polar Year.

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