A Brilliant Explorer Like Scott and Shackleton, Mr. H. G.
Watkins has died among the ice on which he had stamped his person- ality. Like them he had great achievements to his credit. Unlike them he had before him almost a life-time's opportunity of bringing unfulfilled promise to fruition, for he has died at 25, with the record of three Arctic expeditions behind him and with a fourth still in progress. To have been picked as leader of the Cambridge University expedition. to Spitzbergen at the age of 21 was a remark-: able distinction, but no one ever doubted the wisdom of the choice. Watkins went to Greenland this summer to make surveys for an air route because he had failed to get financial support for a proposed journey, in Shackle-. ton's footsteps, across the Antarctic Continent. If he had gone south he might be alive still. He was a true scientist and his voyages were the fruit of gallantry devoted to definite ends. In that respect as well as in others there is both justice and fitness in Dr. H. R. Mill's verdict (in a tribute in The Times), that among all the Polar explorers of .the last century " no one can stand beside young Watkins save the young Fridtjof Nansen as I met him first on his return from the first crossing of Greenland 44 years ago." High courage directed to worthy purpose commands respect and admiration no less in failure than in success.
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