The Second Polar Year

Extract

Co-operation on an international scale is not easy to arrange in the most prosperous times: in these days of financial stress the difficulties of ensuring sufficiently close collaboration to make the second Polar Year a complete success are very great. Since the July statement of the position, published in The Polar Record, ideas have become appreciably clearer as to what is really likely to be done by the various co-operating countries in the year's programme. It now seems that while the relative completeness of the network of stations in the northern hemisphere is assured, there will be little special activity in the southern hemisphere, except within the domains of each of the countries interested. France may have to abandon her Kerguelen and St Paul projects, and recent events in the Argentine, Brazil and Chile have reduced the expectation of co-operation from these countries in establishing special island stations or even extending their present work in the South Atlantic. New Zealand, however, may still find funds for meteorological observations on Macquarie Island, where the Mawson Expedition of 1912–13 had a station.