foundation and will save me many months of work in preparation, and give
me useful knowledge for the actual work of my expedition." If this book
can guide the future explorer by the light of the past, it will not have
been written in vain.

But this was not my main object in writing this book. When I undertook in
1913 to write, for the Antarctic Committee, an Official Narrative on
condition that I was given a free hand, what I wanted to do above all
things was to show what work was done; who did it; to whom the credit of
the work was due; who took the responsibility; who did the hard sledging;
and who pulled us through that last and most ghastly year when two
parties were adrift, and God only knew what was best to be done; when,
had things gone on much longer, men would undoubtedly have gone mad.
There is no record of these things, though perhaps the world thinks there
is. Generally as a mere follower, without much responsibility, and often
scared out of my wits, I was in the thick of it all, and I know.

Unfortunately I could not reconcile a sincere personal confession with
the decorous obliquity of an Official Narrative; and I found that I had
put the Antarctic Committee in a difficulty from which I could rescue
them only by taking the book off their hands; for it was clear that what
I had written was not what is expected from a Committee, even though no
member may disapprove of a word of it. A proper Official Narrative
presented itself to our imaginations and sense of propriety as a quarto
volume, uniform with the scientific reports, dustily invisible on Museum
shelves, and replete with--in the words of my Commission--"times of
starting, hours of march, ground and weather conditions," not very useful
as material for future Antarcticists, and in no wise effecting any
catharsis of the writer's conscience. I could not pretend that I had
fulfilled these conditions; and so I decided to take the undivided