AT THE MACQUARIES.

Dominion, Volume 6, Issue 1840, 28 August 1913, Page 6

AT THE MACQUARIES.

The interesting account which appeared in yesterday's Dominion of the doings of the members of Dr. Mawson's expedition at the inhospitable Macquaries may perhaps set some people wondering whether these expeditions are worth all the trouble and expense they entail. Here are the members_ of this expedition, it may be said, enduring great hardships and putting up cheerfully with all sorts of discomfort—and what for? To increase human knowledge and to extend the conquests of science. Their labours may or may not have a commercial value, in any case that is a secondary matter; but it is a great thing that men should be willing to undertake these expeditions without any thought of personal gain, for by so doing they remind us all that there are things in life which cannot be measured by money standards. In the course of one of those delightful non-political speeches which he occasionally delivers, Mil. Balfour recently remarked that it was one of his foremost articles of social faith that it was to the labours of the man of science, working for purely scientific ends and without any thought of the application of his doctrines to the practical needs of mankind, that mankind would be most indebted as time went on. _ Mr. Balfour does not mean that disinterested research of this kind has not justified itself from the practical point of view, for he went .on to say that the general public did not realise that it was to the results of pure science that they had owed in the past, and would owe more and more in the future, all great advances in industrial knowledge-and practice. Still less did they realise that the man of science who was working consciously towards that end was only half a man of science, and wa-s not likely to do his scientific work' nearly as well as if he were simply and solely occupied in advancing that branch of knowledge with which he was connected. The'se words of Mr. Balfour indicate'the'true spirit of science, and it is in this spirit that the party on the Macquaries are cheerfully doing their, part in the work of increasing; man s knowledge of Nature and its laws.