The Times is actually softening its tone on the subject
of Arctic expeditions. For a generation at least, that mirror of middle-class opinion in England has entertained and freely ex- pressed two quite capricious prejudices with which the majority -of its readers have hardly ever had the least sympathy. The one was its hatred of the African Squadron intended to put down the Slave trade, and the other was its steady opposition to Arctic ex- ploration, on the ground that it is Quixotic, fruitless, and expen- sive of human life. Now at last it is actually abandoning this latter pesition. On Tuesday, it gave a list of all the recent Arctic Expeditions since the last fatal' one, Sir John Franklin's, and showed that all the crews of the various vessels had returned in safety to their homes with only such deaths as might fairly have been expected even in less dangerous seas. In thirty-two expeditions only 38 deaths occurred, being at the rate of only 11 per cent, to the number of persons employed. But the conversion of the Times to the policy of Arctic expedi- tions will be as remarkable an event as the discovery of the mild Polar Sea itself. It will be the end of a peculiar tradition, the sacrifice of a journalistic heirloom, the surrender of a fanciful literary inheritance.
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