Counter-Currents
animals. It is profoundly discouraging to read in the accredited organ of an American humane society an angry protest against Vilhjalmur Stefansson's being permitted the use of Eskimo dogs on his Arctic explorations, because, forsooth, when he went hungry, the dogs went hungry too, and because their feet were hurt by the ice. The writer (a woman) reminds us that these dogs (like all other animals) are not "free agents"; and she calls upon public opinion and law to rescue them. We hear about the "long arm of the law," but it would be a giant stretch that could reach Stefansson in his ice fields. "Men who do such things," she affirms, "are not heroes of the highest type; and, anyway, when you have found or explored the North Pole or the South Pole, what can you do with it?"
This query is hard to answer. Perhaps no explorer wants to do anything with the Poles; but just leave them as they are, uncolonized for the present. They
4
