5 OCTOBER 1918, Page 3

The British flag was hoisted in Spitabergen last week. Our

Government have apparently decided that the Arctic Islands, rich in coal and iron deposits which are laeing.worked by a British company, can no longer be regarded as No Man's Land. The Germans and the Bolsheviks in the Brest Treaty coolly proposed to share Spitsbergen between them, and Germany had a wireless station there. Our interest in Spitsbergen is of very long standing. Under the early Stuarts both England and Holland claimed the archipelago. English and Dutch whale-fishers waged bitter fend in those inhospitable lands, where the fishing station of Smeetenberg, as Sir Martin Conway has recorded in his excellent book, was a thriving town in the Arctic summers.