MARGINAL COMMENTS
By DESMOND SHAWE-TAYLOR
EVEREST, they say, is to be attempted again next year. How magnificent is the obstinacy of man- kind, we reflect, and lay the folded paper down in order to meditate inaccurately upon those remote, incomprehen- sible peaks, losing ourselves in a mystery, pursuing our reason to an 0 altitude .1 and exclaiming with the modern poet :
Thera shines upon till topmost pool{ of peril A throne for spirits that abound in life.
Then meaner, more sublunary thoughts break in. If mankind is magnificently obstinate, it is also incurably childish. What are we after all but a pack of school- boys daring each other to walk along a highly dangerous ledge which no architect ever intended for perambulation ? Indeed, the case is worse : for whereas the schoolboy attempts the forbidden feat in a rash moment of gusto, the grown-up mountaineer devotes the best years of his life to the maturing of his hazardous plans. Would not mankind do better to walk along the garden paths (and weed them) instead of larking about on the walls ? By this time, it is clear, the romantic glow has faded a little, and we boldly ask ourselves : " Is it worth it ? "
It is a question to which initny great men would have returned a decided negative. Homer, responsive enough to heroism where heroism seemed to have some point, would have made nothing of the project : his Odysseus, often cited as a symbol of Wanderlust, was in fact always longing to get home. Horace—well, Horace thought men were crazy to trust themselves on the sea. " It is not evident," Dr. Johnson might reply, " that the sum of human happiness can be either increased by the success, or diminished by the failure, of such an enter- prise." Climbing Mount Everest is in fact a piece of pure romanticism which cannot be expected to appeal to the rationalist temper ; but we cannot do without romance, and in a muddy-livered world which gets it usually from the spectacle of Clark Gable in a tuxedo or Mussolini in a rage, we should be grateful for an object of admiration so noble and disinterested as the moun- taineer. A group of men hacking their icy way up the slopes of Everest, breasting winds to which no adjective could do justice, and all for honour's sake ! the prospect enlarges, liberates, inspires. The humdrum home-keeping citizen may well feel like Hamlet in the presence of Fortinbras. And he is positively glad that they should make no pretence of being even partly a scientific expedi- tion. Geographers are always urging them to drag cumbrous theodolites about the Himalayan snows ; their refusal enhances the irrational splendour of the whole business.
But if we have now recovered something of the first romantic glow, certain last reflections will not be stilled. An expedition of this sort is preceded by years of precise and vigorous planning and passionate attention to the smallest details of organisation and design. If only other causes could command the same brains, skill, devotion and resolution : the clearing of the slums, say, the endowment of a National Theatre, or the afforestation and preservation of the 'English landscape ! Like every- body else I shall be delighted to learn, in 1938 or another year, that the last formidable pent-house slope of Everest has been traversed, the Union Jack planted (for as long as it will stay there) upon that awful summit. But I hope that, on the same page of my morning paper, someone will not still be wondering whether something definite cannot be done about the depressed areas.
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