A Reuter message in the papers of Tuesday summarized a
most graceful tribute to Captain Oates which appeared in the Paris Temps. The Temps said :—
" His self-sacrifice bears the mark of that absolute self-control which an Englishman prizes above all else in the world. When the question is asked, ' What is a true gentleman ? ' our neighbours will have no need to search their history or Shakespeare. It will suffice to reply that he is the man who behaves like Captain Oates."
Of the epitaph inscribed on the cairn built to Oates'a memory—" Hereabouts died a very gallant gentleman",
the Temps said, "These men find the right word at once. They require no effort to raise themselves to the sublime."
No one, certainly, who has a sense of the value of words and of the greatness and dignity of simplicity will have failed to
note the telling quality of the messages from the Antirretic
expedition. Captain Scott's message is already an heroic legend. The epitaph on Oates is quite Elizabethan in inspiration.
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