OCR Text |
Show An Epic of the Ice Nine months ago, in May, 1937, four Russicn seien'ists were set adrift near the North Pole. Since that time they have drifted slowly southward, between Greenland and Spitzbergen, cn an ice floe, making scientific observations that have been reported in part, by radio to Moscow. A few weeks age an Arctic hurricane hurri-cane cracked the iqe floe, . which had been about ten feet thick and a mile and a quarter in diameter. The seien'ists were left enly a floating float-ing fragment, hardly as large as a city block. Worse was the fact that its size would not permit easy landing land-ing of airplanes, which had been expected to evacuate the scientists and their equipment at the end of the winter. Last week Russian rescue ships exchang-ed signals with the icebound ice-bound campers by searchlights and flares while the campers did their best to prepare a landing field for the planes cn a neighboring floe in the jumbled ice field. Only twenty miles separated the men but whether wheth-er the rescuers had arrived to save 'heir party or to see them snatche' out cf sight could only be certain when the rescue was completed. Altogether the scientists drifted more than a thousand miles. Their mi.ssicn had developed interesting facts for scientists, among them the faster rate cf drifting ice, the presence pres-ence of tiny crabs, Jellyfish and ot.'.er life at a depth of 3.000 feet land that the polar region is not, as p.eviou.sly imagined, the "weather : kitchen" for the Northern hemisphere. hemis-phere. While there are not many American Ameri-can who agree with the political development de-velopment cf the Soviet state surely :he world of science is big enough for all mankind to appreciate and admire the contribution made by these Russians, who for many months slowly floated on ice wh:. they plied their work. |