Abstract
NO answer, so far as we are aware, has appeared to Prof. Poulton's letter to the Fellows of the Roya' Society on Prof. Gregory's resignation of the leadership of the scientific staff of the Antarctic expedition (of which we published a copy on May 23). We are therefore forced to conclude that the representatives of this Society on the Joint Committee are content (to use our own words) to let judgment go by default, and admit Prof. Poulton's statements to be substantially correct. Since that date, according to a second letter which we published last week, rumours have been circulated that the real cause of Prof. Gregory's resignation was not that which had been publicly stated, but domestic considerations. The dates given to Prof. Poulton's statements and extracts from letters written by Prof. Gregoiy (which documents we have been allowed to examine) show these rumours to be baseless, and how they have arisen is no less a mystery than that alteration in the minutes of a resolution passed by the Joint Committee on February 14, 1900, mentioned in Prof. Poulton's former letter. Prof. Gregory's position has been consistent and definite throughout. He accepted the offer of the post on certain conditions, which he believed himself (not unreasonably, in our opinion) to have made clear. On returning to England last December he found the situation had been altered. Though not liking the changes he decided to accept them, and naturally supposed when he left England last February that the arrangement, concluded the day before he sailed, would be final. On receipt of a cable message that it had been further modified (by the acceptance, in substance, of Mr. Darwin's proposition), his first impulse, as he states, when the news arrived was to send a telegram announcing his resignation; but, after reflection, he thought it wiser to await the receipt of particulars by letter. Then came the refusal of the Council of the Royal Geographical Society to accept the instructions, thus modified, the appointment of an arbitration committee, as we may call it, and their decision, which virtually endorsed the action of that Society. When Prof. Gregory was informed by telegraph of the last step he at once cabled his resignation. We do not see how he could have done otherwise. There was now, to use his own words, “no guarantee to prevent the scientific work from being subordinated to naval adventure, an object admirable in itself, but not the one for which I understood this expedition to be organised.”
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The National Antarctic Expedition . Nature 64, 182–183 (1901). https://doi.org/10.1038/064182d0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/064182d0