EVEREST CLIMBED
Sir,-Station 1ZB’s Sports Session on Friday evening, in paying tribute to Sir Edmund Hillary, proclaimed, inter alia. "New Zealand beats the world" (a nicely ambiguous. statement), and was also inclined to infer that, as a race, New Zealanders are supreme among men. Again. on Sunday evening the 15-minute production from 1YA, "Everest Has Been Climbed," referred to Hillary as "the greatest mountaineer in the world," It may be that these assumptions are correct; but surely, to separate any one man’s efforts (noble as they were), is to discount the fact that Everest expeditions, by their very nature, are team efforts involving the sinking of personalities in the common aim. To assume that a man is "the greatest mountaineer" because he »has climbed the highest mountain is to draw conclusions that are not necessarily supported by known facts; indeed, was not Hillary accompanied by another in the successful assault? Moreover, news is just to hand that two other men were very close to the summit when their oxygen apparatus failed them. Obviously luck does play a part. All those absorbing accounts of previous Everest expeditions are notable for their modesty, their humility and their generosity. They show, too, that the magnitude of the task and the majesty of the Himalayan scene seems to lift men’s thoughts and efforts beyond the terrestrial to the spiritual, where the individual is submerged in the whole. Let us in our joy guard against the damaging of that spirit of Everest. One feels sure that Sir Edmund Hillary himself would be the first to deplore the division into nationalities, and the over-glori-fying of personalities in this mighty epic of combined oneratidons.
A. P. B.
WATSON
(Orakei)_
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https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/periodicals/NZLIST19530626.2.12.1
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New Zealand Listener, Volume 29, Issue 728, 26 June 1953, Page 5
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282EVEREST CLIMBED New Zealand Listener, Volume 29, Issue 728, 26 June 1953, Page 5
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Copyright in the work University Entrance by Janet Frame (credited as J.F., 22 March 1946, page 18), is owned by the Janet Frame Literary Trust. The National Library has been granted permission to digitise this article and make it available online as part of this digitised version of the New Zealand Listener. You can search, browse, and print this article for research and personal study only. Permission must be obtained from the Janet Frame Literary Trust for any other use.
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