responsibility on my own shoulders. None the less the Committee, having
given me access to its information, is entitled to all the credit of a
formal Official Narrative, without the least responsibility for the
passages which I have studied to make as personal in style as possible,
so that no greater authority may be attached to them than I deserve.

I need hardly add that the nine years' delay in the appearance of my book
was caused by the war. Before I had recovered from the heavy overdraft
made on my strength by the expedition I found myself in Flanders looking
after a fleet of armoured cars. A war is like the Antarctic in one
respect. There is no getting out of it with honour as long as you can put
one foot before the other. I came back badly invalided; and the book had
to wait accordingly.

[Illustration: FROM NEW ZEALAND TO THE SOUTH POLE--Apsley Cherry-Garrard,
del.--Emery Walker Ltd., Collotypers.]

FOOTNOTES:

[1] Cook, _A Voyage towards the South Pole_, Introduction.

[2] Cook, _A Voyage towards the South Pole_, vol. i. p. 23.

[3] Ibid. p. 28.

[4] Cook, _A Voyage towards the South Pole_, vol. i. p. 268.

[5] Ibid. p. 275.

[6] Scott, _Voyage of the Discovery_, vol. i. p. 9.