A SPECTATOR'S NOTEBOOK
IAM all for altruism, a virtue (or is it only a quality ?) of increasing rarity. But I cannot help wondering whether the members of the Everest Expedition are not being re- quired to exhibit it to a degree which is hardly fair to them. It was not for money that they set out to climb Everest; but as a direct result of their success in doing so a good deal of money is being made, and almost none of it is being made by them. Their contract with the Joint Himalayan Committee ensures that all fees received during the next three years from articles and lectures will go to the Everest Trust Fund, for the future advancement of exploration and research in mountainous regions; and this Fund will also receive a proportion of the profits made by the film, by appearing at whose European premieres some of the climbers have done a good service both to British prestige, and to the pockets of the film interests con- cerned, without any material gain to themselves. Sir John Hunt, who has now been ordered to rest, is entitled to a small fraction of the royalties payable on the astronomical sales of his book; the rest will be used to underwrite enterprises in which he, unlike the younger members of his team, can hardly hope to take an active part. In principle these arrangements—some form of which was of course inevitable—are wholly admirable, and the Joint Himalayan Committee can be relied on to see that they do not work out inequitably in the long run. But in the meantime there is a certain irony about a division of the spoils from which the victors alone emerge not only empty- handed, but committed, in an honorary capacity, to further effort.
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