| Description | Written from Helens Way, Belfast
States that the Markham draft letter to Captain Scott has just reached him. He takes it for granted that Huggins has already decided not to adopt it. In the copy (he has another) the parts he most strongly objects to are marked. Hopes Huggins will adhere to his prior draft, which this new communication ignores. Huggins might well reply that in his judgement the aggregate time for reviewing the work of the expedition in detail will not have come until its records and collections have been received and considered by experts, that though their expectations may be very high any detailed appreciation prior to that time will be obviously devoid of solid presentation and therefore liable to criticism and misconception. That as the expedition is coming home encouragement is not needed but merely a genuine letter of explanation. That therefore Huggins prefers to await Sir Clement Markham's consideration of Huggins draft of a joint letter to Captain Scott of date September 5, which was drawn up in accordance with these ideas. States one constantly hears gloomy forebodings as the scientific work of the expedition, which would be intensified by an official letter praising it up on no information whatever.
Postscript; states the matter is not urgent. |