To the Bottom

Opposed by the House as money for a "joy ride" (TIME, June 12), but shoved through with the third deficiency bill by Senate pressure, $340,000 became available last week to send Rear Admiral Richard Evelyn Byrd back to Little America, claim a lot more of it for the U. S. The far-roving mind of Franklin Roosevelt was captivated by Admiral Byrd's arguments for this venture and last week, after a map session at his desk, he ordered the expedition to proceed by early October. In on the planning were Commandant (Rear Admiral) Russell Randolph Waesche of the Coast Guard and several Navy men.

Testifying before a House subcommittee, Admiral Byrd made some dazzling statements : "We discovered a seam of coal down there that we think is sufficient to supply the United States for 100 years or more. This seam of coal is ... exposed along the slope of a high mountain range so that it is not necessary to dig for it. ...

"I have no doubt that there is oil in Antarctica. . . . Who knows but what our future reservoirs of oil and coal . . . lie waiting for us at the bottom of the world?"

First U. S. mariner to see Antarctica was Nathaniel B. Palmer, a sealer out of Stonington, Conn., in 1820. In 1840, Lieutenant Charles Wilkes, U. S. N., sent by Congress, sighted its white peaks, declared it to be a continental land mass. To Palmer Land from the tip of South America is only 575 nautical miles. Political argument is that the million-square-mile sector explored by U. S. visitors from Palmer to Byrd (and Lincoln Ellsworth) should be claimed in toto, instead of in spots, brought within the Monroe Doctrine's sphere, before Germany or another power moves in. According to Admiral Byrd: "No foreign expedition has so much as looked upon [it]. . . . We have penetrated it ... lived in it ... built in it." The U. S. was laggard in claiming its discoveries in the Arctic and Pacific he argued: let it not lose this last rich find in a shrinking world.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.