One more significant fact:  At the same time that the fighting broke out at Tabriz, the Russian troops at Resht and Enzeli, hundreds of miles away, shot down the Persian police and many inhabitants without warning or provocation of any kind.  And the date also happened to be just after the Persian cabinet had definitely informed the Russian Legation that all the demands of Russia’s ultimatum were accepted—­a condition which the British Government had publicly assured the Persians would be followed by the withdrawal of the Russian invading forces, and which the Russian Government had officially confirmed, “unless fresh incidents should arise in the mean time to make the retention of the troops advisable.”

I would suggest that the Powers—­England and Russia—­may think that they thus escape all responsibility for what goes on in Persia, but the world has long since grown familiar with such methods.  Mere cant, however seriously put forth in official statements, no longer blinds educated public opinion as to the facts in these acts of international brigandage.  The truth is that England and Russia are still playing a hand in the game of medieval diplomacy.

The puerility of talking of Persia having affronted Russian consular officers or of Persia’s Treasurer-General having appointed a British subject to be a tax collector at Tabriz, as the reasons for Russia’s aggressive and brutal policy in Persia, is only too apparent.  Volumes would not contain the bare record of the acts of aggression, deceit, and cruelty which Russian agents have committed against Persian sovereignty and the constitutional government since the deposition of Muhammad Ali in 1909.

DISCOVERY OF THE SOUTH POLE A.D. 1911

ROALD AMUNDSEN

On December 16, 1911, a Norwegian exploring party headed by Captain Roald Amundsen reached the South Pole.  The discovery thus followed with surprising closeness after Peary’s triumph in reaching the North Pole in 1909.

Antarctic exploration had never attracted so much attention as that of the far north; partly because an almost impossible ice barrier a hundred feet high was known to extend across the southern ocean at about the parallel of the Antarctic Circle.  In 1908, however, an English expedition under Lieutenant Shackleton managed to penetrate beyond this barrier in the region south of New Zealand and reached to within less than two hundred miles of the pole.  They established the fact that in contrast to the deep waters which flow above the northern Pole, the southern Pole is raised upon an Antarctic mountain continent many thousand feet in height.  Shackleton’s success led to several other expeditions, and in 1910 three separate parties made almost simultaneous efforts to reach the Pole, one from Japan and one from England, as well as the Norwegian one.

We give here Captain Amundsen’s own account of his expedition as first explained by him before the Berlin Geographical Society and published by the New York Geographical Society in their bulletin.