NEWS OF THE WEEK
IT became known on Monday night, as the result of a message 'received at Printing House Square from Colonel John Hunt, that the summit of Mount Everest was scaled on May 29th by E. P. Hillary, a New Zealander, and the Sherpa Tensing Bhutia. The news, at which the Queen expressed her delight, afforded an equal pleasure to her sub- jects and added, vicariously, to the splendours of Coronation Day a bonus of exotic glory. The feat, which if the weather held may since have been duplicated by other members of the expedition, is a triumph of which this country has the more right to feel proud in that it represents the culmination of a consistent effort embarked on thirty-two years ago and sustained by ten successive expeditions, all of them gallant failures. In all these ventures, the British climbers conducted themselves admirably. Their record on Everest has been one, not only of heroism and endurance, but of selflessness and- -in spite of the steadily increasing glare of publicity which has been focussed on their efforts—of self-effacement. It is typical of the Everest tradition that the great store of experience gained so bitterly by the British was placed unreservedly at the disposal of the Swiss, who with its help nearly achieved the summit at their first attempt last year. The long battle against the mountain was fought with chivalry. The men who have won it would be the first to admit that almost as much honour is due to their predecessors as to themselves; and of inany pioneers none, probably, played so decisive a part as Mr. Eric Shipton, by whom the southern approach to the summit was discovered and reconnoitred in 1951. It is not a mountain that has been conquered, though we talk as if it Were. The ascent of Everest was made because the human spirit proved itself, once more, capable of overcoming the p_h ysical odds against it. Anyone who knows anything about Everest knows also that, however favourable the conditions may have been on May 29th, those odds were overwhelming; and he is unlikely to be proved far wrong if he guessed that Hillary and Tensing got to the top because they did not know when they were beaten.
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