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By Charles Hodges

GAINST a troubled background of Mexico's presidential crisis, Europe's chronic 'danger spots,' and China's battle for unity, the Anti-War Pact sponsored by the United States has run the gauntlet of Old World statesmanship with every promise of

success.

Reservations have given way to 'interpretations,' such as the British explanation of their empire interests, with all acceptances at hand in Washington toward the month-end. The August conference of signatories to complete the pact marks the last stage of this pilgrimage of peace.

Below the Rio Grande, Washington has been improving the stock of the United States among Latin-American nations.

Possibly nowhere has this shown to better advantage than in the human tragedy surrounding Mexico. The assassination of PresidentElect Obregón in the middle of July proved a crucial test for the Calles régime, with whom the United States has been working out a solution of paramount problems in MexicanAmerican friendship, and momentarily clouded the prospects for stabilization. The political balance has swung, however, in the direction of internal accord.

Next door, the American supervision of Nicaraguan elections, now close at hand, approaches its climax in the bitter battle of the

Liberal and Conservative Parties of the Central American republic. Though sentiment has become more favorable to the intervention of the United States, Washington's Caribbean policy possibly is the larger issue at the polls.

In South America, the promise of Chile and Peru reaching a settlement of their feud over Tacna-Arica becomes more substantial with the two West Coast republics once again shaking hands. This resumption of diplomatic relations, Washington feels, is but the prelude to a full liquidation of difficulties which the good offices of the United States have long sought to clear up.

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In the Orient, nationalism continues to color the picture. The Chinese Nationalists, escaping the Scylla and Charybdis of Japan and the Treaty Powers, have made good their mastery of North China. Manchuria, that apple of Nippon's eye, has indicated its intention to return to the Chinese fold. Yet such prospects of Chinese unity seem too good to be true. pecially with the Mikado's land openly declaring against the extension of Nationalist control to the Manchurian provinces. A smaller flame of nationalism, the Philippine independence movement, burns less aggressively as native leaders become reconciled to Governor-General Stimson's policies. The British in India, however, find themselves once again confronted with the power of Gandhi, as the Hindu apostle

of non-coöperation renews his programme of governmental paralysis. Closer to Europe, the struggle of Egypt over her relations with Britain, complicated by the all-important Suez Canal, has resulted in the failure of another parliamentary régime; a three-year dictatorship in Cairo, received as a 'surprise' by the British Foreign Office, opens up a new phase in Egypt's post-war status.

Europe's long existing sore spots from the Baltic to the Adriatic are providing their quota of anxiety. Poland and Lithuania, struggling over the city of Vilna, once more are deadlocked; the dispute goes to the looming League Assembly. Hungary becomes bitter over the results of the Transylvania land question, Rumania being the other party to a controversy which has left Budapest bitter against Geneva. Jugoslavia's internal crisis, precipitated by the shooting of Croatian leaders, leaves the paramount problem of Italy's Adriatic expansion still in the air by again postponing ratification of the Nettuno Conventions, pending for many months. Rome appears to be sympathetically inclined toward Belgrade in its difficulties.

Progress, however, is to be recorded in the settlement of the Tangier Question, which has been complicating the Mediterranean situation. Here, a diplomatic equation has been worked out to satisfy Spanish, French, Italian, and British interests and prestige.

TH

By Vilhjalmur Stefansson

HE Arctic and Antarctic are not

only 'far as the poles apart' in distance; they are antipodal, too, in many other striking qualities. This raises new problems for the two Arctic flyers, Commander Richard Evelyn Byrd, of the United States Navy (retired), and Captain Sir George Hubert Wilkins, of the Australian Army (World War service), when in September of this year, as they now plan, they sail with northern experience to guide them in their southern adventures.

Byrd, of course, knows the Antarctic through books as well as through the speech and counsel of many who have been there. Wilkins has these advantages, too, but in addition he knows the Antarctic personally, for he was second-in-command of the British Imperial Antarctic Expedition of 1920-21, and he was chief of the scientific staff with Sir Ernest Shackleton in his Antarctic expedition of 1921-22.

The differences between the Arctic and Antarctic are so striking that they might have been specially created for rhetoricians to describe in balanced sentences. They are antithetical, they complement each other, they are reciprocal, too, in a way of speaking.

Basic is the difference that the Antarctic is in the main a small continent, the Arctic in the main a small ocean. The Arctic should, indeed, be named a sea rather than an ocean because of its lack of size. Now that we are beginning to cross it frequently by air and know it more intimately, we are tending to revert to the Elizabethan usage and speak of it as the Northern Sea, the Polar Sea, the Frozen Sea, the Arctic Mediterranean, or almost anything else than an ocean. The mistaken idea of its great size seems, by the way, to be derived mainly from that convenient but otherwise wretched type of map known as the Mercator projection, which makes Australia look only one-third as large as Greenland, although it is three and a half times as large, and even more distorts the Northern Sea until it impresses you as being larger than the Pacific, although it is smaller than one-twelfth of the Atlantic.

But Antarctica is not a very small continent, for it is larger than Australia. There is, of course, the possibility that

HE ANTARCTIC expedi

THE

tions planned by COMMANDER BYRD and CAPTAIN SIR GEORGE WILKINS for this month are drawing the World's attention to the South Polar Regions.

What difficulties will be encountered by these two gallant flyers in their expeditions? How will the obstacles soon to confront them off the tip of South America differ from those they have already overcome in the North? From the point of view of exploration, what is the significance of the fact that the two poles of the earth are almost as different as black and white? An experienced Arctic explorer tells us in this article.

what we think of as one land mass may be instead an island in size somewhere between Greenland and Australia, and one or more other islands separated

and by Wilkins and Eielsen in 1927 when, by the echo method, they found 17,000 feet about 550 miles northwest from Alaska.

Although the Antarctic Continent is on the average higher above sea level than any other continent, it is not yet known to contain any mountain as high as the leading peaks of the five other continents. For the Antarctic Mount Markham is 3365 feet lower than Mount Elbruz (Europe), 4356 feet lower than Kibo Peak (Africa), 5200 feet lower than Mount McKinley (North America), 7980 feet lower than Mount Aconcagua (South America), and 14,041 feet lower than Mount Everest, considered not only the highest mountain of Asia but of all the world.

The Arctic, although deep considering its small size, is by no means the deepest of all the oceans. The Wilkins sounding is 5968 feet less than the greatest recorded depth of the Indian Ocean, falls 14,366 feet short of the greatest depth of the Atlantic, and 17,210 short of the Pacific.

ENERALLY

Ross Sea to the Weddell Sea, cutting off what we now call Graham Land from the rest of Antarctica. The depression running between those two bights may prove to be a real division of land masses. But to the traveler, whether he walks or flies, it will remain of theoretical interest, for it is masked with such thick ice that nothing but elaborate deduction or observations by technical scientific methods can determine that the ice rests on land that is below sea level rather than above it.

As if to conform with what resembles an antithetical plan, the ice peaks of the Antarctic Continent are about as much above sea level as the greatest depths of the Northern Mediterranean are below it around three miles in each case. The highest altitude observed in the South was in 1902 by Scott, who found Mount Markham to be about 15,100 feet. The greatest depths measured in the North were by Storker Storkerson of the third Stefansson Expedition, when in 1918 he sounded by wire and a lead 15,000 feet at a point about 90 miles north of eastern Alaska,

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about polar districts do apply to the Antarctic and do not apply to the Arctic. There is, for instance, a real ice cap around the South Pole; around the North Pole there is no ice cap except when the journalists are talking about it. It is probable that the most intense cold on earth is found shortly after midwinter at the South Pole. At the North Pole the corresponding temperature is probably only half as far below zero and from 10° to 30° warmer than many places where Europeans live, as, for instance, the Verkhoyansk locality in the Yakutsk Province of Siberia, where grains are cultivated in summer with a July temperature of 90° in the shade, but where the winter cold reaches 90° below zero. It is probable that the South Pole minimum is lower than 120° below zero, Fahrenheit; the minimum at the North Pole is probably never colder than 60° below. Incidentally, there are towns in the United States that have observed minimum temperatures from five to ten degrees lower than the theoretical minimum for the North Pole.

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THE ANTARCTIC REGIONS

It would be a mistake to conclude from these midwinter temperatures that exploratory work in the Antarctic has been conducted in the past at lower temperatures than in the Arctic, or that it is likely to be in the near future. On the contrary, most Arctic travelers have reported colder weather on their journeys than has any Antarctic traveler. This is because the favorable exploring season in the Arctic is in the winter but the favorable season in the Antarctic is the summer.

It used to be supposed that Arctic exploration could be done only in spring or summer, and the early expeditions followed that principle. But Sir Leopold McClintock and others got away from it around 1850, and then began the long exploratory journeys by sledge. Peary laid it down as a principle that a well conducted Arctic expedition should commence sledge operations in January or February and finish by April, or at the latest in early May. But all Antarctic explorers have begun their work in spring and finished it by autumn. This will doubtless be the practice there for the immediate future.

With regard to wind distribution, the Antarctic is so regular that it is incredible to us of the northern hemisphere, who are not brought up to any such thing. This regularity of the winds follows mainly from the symmetry of the land. The Antarctic continent is roughly circular. The South Pole is approximately in the centre of it; the centre is, roughly speaking, the highest part, and the land slopes away in every direction. This frozen and icecovered land is surrounded, therefore, in a circle by an unfrozen and ice-free ocean. The other three southern continents are about equally far away in their three

directions, South America, Africa, and Australia.

According to a theory worked out in greatest detail by Professor William

H. Hobbs, of the University of Michigan, and partly originated by him, the wind action of the Antarctic district has been explained with clearness, but not in any simple way that can be condensed into a magazine paragraph. You are substantially in accord with that theory, however, if you think first of the fact that cold air is heavier than warm. Then you recall how cold it is in the centre of the Antarctic Continent and how any air that is there will tend to slide down all the sides of that Continent away from the high centre, like water sliding off the back of a turtle. The farther the air slides, the more momentum it will get. Furthermore, it will move faster when it gets to where the hill is steeper, and that is generally near the edges of the continent. Then, moreover, the sea all around the land is comparatively warm, and so there will be rising currents above it, there will be rising currents above it, creating a partial vacuum for the air that has been sliding and sliding faster toward the edges of the land to rush down into.

Here you have the main explanation that states the rule and covers everything but the inevitable exceptions that are brought about by various subsidiary forces described by Professor Hobbs. Remembering the rule and forgetting the exceptions for the moment, you are not surprised to learn from Sir Douglas Mawson that the average wind velocity for a whole year at his winter base, Adelie Land, was approximately fifty miles per hour, that the greatest velocity for the windiest month was 60.7 miles per for the windiest month was 60.7 miles per hour, the average for the windiest day was 107 miles per hour, and 180 miles per hour the highest velocity of single gusts.

You are made to realize the exceptions, however, when you find that no Antarctic expedition has recorded nearly as high velocities as Mawson because their base stations were located in other parts, and that some expeditions, such as those of Scott and Amundsen, were in large part exempted from strong winds because of their choice of wintering quarters.

A corollary to all the above is that there could never be much wind right around the South Pole. We knew this

would be so, and both Scott and Amundsen observed conditions there which indicate that a wind has never blown at all for the last thousand years, or at least not with any violence.

When the violent winds blowing off the edges of the Antarctic Continent proceed in every direction north into the ocean, they are diverted from their course by the rotation of the earth, producing the storms of the Roaring Forties.

It used to be thought that there was a corresponding symmetry of wind circulation around a North Pole centre. This idea has been dispelled gradually by the observations of travelers, and new theories have been formed by Hobbs and others which make Greenland play in the north somewhat the part which the Antarctic Continent plays in the south.

Greenland has the will to dominate in the north but hardly the power. It is chief among many forces, no doubt, but by no means omnipotent like the South Polar Continent. Still there are many similarities, if no strict parallels. Instead of the complete absence of winds at the centre of the Antarctic Continent, these are few and weak at the centre of Greenland. Her winds speed up towards the margin, too, but are interfered with and confused by large northern hemisphere cyclonic storms that originate outside.

Both in Greenland and the Antarctic the gravitational and centrifugal gales stop occasionally, to take their breath as it were, for reasons of temperature, friction, and other complicated things that have been worked out in part by the scientists and are now in process of more complete solution.

There are various symmetries about the Antarctic that are wanting in the Arctic. In the South, for instance, the mathematical pole is approximately in the centre of the area of land ice and is, therefore, also the hardest point to reach. In the North, the mathematical pole is nowhere near the centre of the floating sea ice and is, therefore, nowhere near being the hardest point to reach. That point lies about four hundred miles from the North Pole in the direction toward Alaska and has been named the Pole of Inaccessibility, or for short the Inaccessible Pole. We can say, then, that the South and Inaccessible Poles lie on top of each other in the Antarctic but that the North and Inaccessible Poles are four hundred miles apart in the Arctic.

Similarly the coldest spot in the southern hemisphere, or the Cold Pole, is doubtless at or very near the South Pole. For the three main factors which

determine extreme minimum temperatures in winter are distance from the equator, distance from the ocean, and height above sea level. The South Pole possesses all these three qualities; the North Pole possesses only one of them, distance from the equator. The North Pole is not high above the ocean, for it is in the ocean, and it is not far away from the ocean for the same reason.

To get the three factors working together and a resulting extreme cold in the northern hemisphere, you must proceed to some large land mass. Of the places so far visited by scientific men the three conditions combine most effectively at the above-mentioned place of Verkhoyansk, in Siberia, which has, therefore, been called the Cold Pole of the northern hemisphere. It is probable, however, that an even lower temperature may be registered in winter somewhere near the centre of Greenland. In either case the Cold Pole of the northern hemisphere is somewhere between nine hundred and twelve hundred miles from the North Pole.

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As implied in the discussion some paragraphs back, the Wind Pole, or centre of wind distribution, lies at or near the South Pole in the Antarctic; but in the northern hemisphere it lies at about the same place in Greenland as does the Cold Pole, or a thousand miles away from the North Pole.

Of course, the Magnetic Pole is about as far from the South Pole in the southern hemisphere as it is from the North Pole in the northern, around one thousand miles.

As regards ocean life, the conditions are not opposed in the Far North and Far South. The general principle is that the amount of animal life per cubic unit of ocean volume is least at the equator and increases as you go north or south. Accordingly we find the great fisheries of the northern hemisphere around Alaska, Newfoundland, Iceland, Norway, and Spitsbergen. Similarly there are incredible quantities of animal life in the ocean when you get to the farthest possible South where the water meets the edge of the land.

But when you step ashore in the Antarctic, the contrast with regard to life becomes as complete as the similarity was till then. The penguins and seals do clamber out upon the rocks or upon the edge of the ice, but they do not go far. Beyond their range there is no life belonging to what we call the higher forms. Not a single four-footed land animal, not even a mouse or a rat scampers over the snow or hides among the rocks. In the Arctic, on the contrary, there are great land animals, such as the

BOTH ENDS OF THE EARTH

caribou (reindeer) and ovibos (musk ox), that crop herbage on the north coasts of the most northerly lands in the world, whether those are continents or islands. The grazing fields of the caribou surround the whole Northern Mediterranean, whether we think of the mainland or islands as belonging to Europe, Asia, or North America. Once upon a time the ovibos completely embraced that sea, too, but he is a beast that does not flee from human enemies and has, therefore, been exterminated wherever men hunt, whether they be civilized or savage. There are a few thousand still left, confined wholly to uninhabited districts.

In further contrast with the South, there are a great many other animals in the North. Hundreds of thousands of white foxes, with one of a blue phase for every hundred that are white. For every ten thousand foxes there are probably a thousand wolves, living on caribou in winter and on birds' eggs and rodents in summer. Of these rodents, there are several varieties. And of the birds there are more than one hundred and fifty species that come north in spring to have their young and go south with them again in autumn. Then there are three birds that spend the winter north, the ravens, snowy owls, and ptarmigan. Perhaps ninety per cent of the owls and ravens go south to the temperate zone in winter, but a few remain in the Arctic; and at least half the ptarmigan stay there the year around.

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land vegetation in the whole Antarctic, though it be a continent larger than Australia.

The form of vegetation known as bacteria may go a considerable way into the Antarctic Continent, flourishing in the snow. Similarly there are microscopic plants that grow in the snow of high mountains in the Arctic and breed in the snowbanks on top of the ice that drifts about on the deep Arctic waters far from land.

The nearest things to land animals. we know about in the Antarctic are certain low forms discovered by the Shackleton expedition in the fresh water of lake bottoms where, in some cases, the ice above them was more than thirty feet thick and the water in which they lived only four or five feet deep between the ice and the bottom.

There is one beast looked upon commonly as a land animal, though its real home is the floating sea ice at considerable distances from land. This is the Arctic polar bear, that feeds almost exclusively on seals and never on fish except when captive in zoological gardens and forced to eat what there is. No corresponding animal is found in the Antarctic.

That there are no bears or similar animals in the Antarctic is either because they never got there from the lands of their origin or else because, if they were there once, they died out at a time when conditions were more unfavorable than they are now. If polar bears could only get to the Antarctic as it is to-day, they would find what to them would be a paradise of blood and slaughter. Penguins do not flee, for there is no creature on land (Continued on page 77)

The great abundance of animal and bird life in the Arctic is, of course, based upon the abundant vegetation. the abundant vegetation. There have been discovered and reported from the Arctic more than 30 varieties (species) of ferns, more than 250 varieties of mosses, more than 330 varieties of lichens and more than 800 varieties of flowering plants. From the Antarctic only two flowering plants have been reported and only 150 species of non-flowering. If you consider the average tonnage of vegetation. per square mile of the lands in the Arctic that are as far from the North Pole as the edge of the Antarctic Continent from the South Pole, you can conclude with probable safety that the tonnage of vegetation from a hundred square miles in the Arctic is greater than the total tonnage of all

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THE ARCTIC REGIONS

H

E has a fourth cousin by marriage in Paris- a settled, veteran émigré. He comes to Paris from Vapniarka, Province of Podolia, clad in what used to be a dark-green hunting suit, dancing-slippers, and a brownish derby. His baggage consists of a notebook and a suitcase filled with well-worn, soiled underwear and rolls of currency-not Russian, to be sure, but the almost equally worthless bills of the border States, among which the most valuable are Bosnian crowns and the sassapitoss of the White Russian Republic.

The magnificent, clean-shaven, metropolitan fourth cousin looks over the new arrival again and again, observes his uncouth provincial manner, discovers his utter ignorance of any language but Russian, glances contemptuously at the greasy bundles of borderstate currency, and says:

'You may lodge in this closet for the time being. Never show yourself in the salon. You'll have three francs a day for your expenses, and a dictionary as a present from me. In two weeks, you'll have to get out.' 'Vasili Vasilievich! But how do you say "exchange" in French?'

'Look in the dictionary.'

An hour later finds the young man already at the agency. There, on the broad steps, between the portico's huge gray pillars, a mighty human whirl

By A. I. Kuprin

From Russkaia Gazela (Paris Monarchist Daily)

'Well?'

'Four hundred francs,' answers the youth modestly.

'Is that so?' The fourth cousin's eye softens. 'Your greasy paper was n't worth ten. Keep right on. When you

ALEKSA

LEKSANDR IVANOVICH KUPRIN, the author of this sketch, is himself a Russian refugee, but of a different type from de Chizhoff, the amusing opportunist whose evolution is satirized. Incidentally, there is in Russian no particle of nobility (de). Its assumption by Chizhoff ('de Chizhoff on his calling cards') is an especially subtle touch by the author.

M. Kuprin was born in 1870, has written many books, among them The Duel, The Red Czar, and Pegia Loshadi. That he is not in sympathy with the present régime in Russia may be surmised from the sketch here presented. This is confirmed when one learns that he has described the great Lenin as having 'the unfeeling innocence of moral idiocy.'

have bought a dinner suit and learned some kind of manners, come again. I'll show you to the world. My wife has tea every Thursday between five and six. And here, take this thousand francs. Don't thank me. The interest on it will be 15 per cent. a year. I'll give you no advice, but if there's business, I'll help. Go on.'

people pack every square inch of space, shoulder to shoulder, cheek to cheek; and the dense mass puffs and swells like rising dough. All shout simultaneously at the top of their lungs. A tenor's upper A dominates the turmoil.

But our youth does not feel embarrassed. On the contrary, he elbows himself with fierce delight into the very midst of the throng and feels as much at home there as he used to feel at the Vapniarka railway station. In this tumultuous sea he has not even a compass to guide him—nothing save the exchange report clipped from that morning's paper.

Two weeks later he again presents himself before his fourth cousin's anglicized stare.

longer buffeted in the crowd of brokers. He drives past in a taxi, beckons to a man who is waiting for him as alert

with a real gold chain hanging across it. In the salons where his fourth cousin has introduced him, he proves unobtrusively witty, very obliging to ladies, and a patient listener to long stories. His 'aunt' is already planning a match for

him to a girl not young, but with money and with many useful connections. Chizhik - for such is his name is somewhat procrastinating in this matter. He has not even hinted that 'over there,' in Russia, he was somewhat — to a certain extent - legally married. He has paid his fourth cousin the 15 per cent. interest demanded, and has even purchased stock in one of the latter's numerous undertakings.

Another year and a half pass. To-day you can find in Paris no trace of Chizhik from Vapniarka. You may meet our esteemed, our beloved, our dear Nikolai Nikolaevich Chizhov (de Chizhoff on his calling cards), a regular visitor at fashionable resorts, beaches, and batailles de fleurs under azure skies.

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The birth of a sturdy son has definitely established his position as a respectable member of society. He has a salon of his own, and gives Wednesday afternoon teas where his mighty fourth cousin drops in as an equal. His own wife wears a new heavy pearl necklace sure thermometer of commercial success. He need not call at the exchange any longer; he gives his orders over the telephone-his own telephone. He has begun to know a good deal about choice wines, good cigars, chic demi-mondaines, and racing horses. He is a Parisian.

and drops a curt order such as: 'Amsterdam,' or 'Salt pork,' or simply 'Stop!' Then he drives on to pursue his complicated commercial affairs. He has already been once at his fourth cousin's wife's tea, and the mighty relative has said to him: 'Nichevo, you are passable, except that you must stop wiping your nose with your fingers. They might think you have no handkerchief. And swallow your food before you begin to speak. your food before you begin to speak. You really do not have to talk at all. That is just as well.'

A year later our youth has begun to fill out a beautiful expanse of waistcoat,

his soul is not satisfied; his heart

certain last touch is still to be acquired; a certain moment is still to come, to round out his career and his figure.

However, de Chizhoff has been born under a lucky star. The supreme moment comes quite naturally. He is at a dinner table in a cabinet particulier at Paillard's, alone with X. from Moscow.

'Well, then, Nikolai Nikolaevich, you take those diamonds?' the man from Moscow asks, sipping his golden Château Yquem. By the way, what an excellent poularde!'

(Continued on page 79)