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in the near future and that they will be of incalculable value in cutting
down time and distance between these points”. Since these men are in
high authority in two of the most progressive countries of the world,
what they have said is more significant than my having said the same
thing in a book called "The Northward Course of Empire", published about
a year before earlier (August 1922). I was merely the prophet of the change,
but they are bringing about the change itself.

End M No single event ever caused such a profound revolution in human
thought as did tThe voyage of Magellan’s ships around the world, for it
transformed the earth from a stationary pancake, housed under a firma-
ment, into one of a family of little spherical planets tagging along
behind a somewhat larger sun on a possibly eternal journey through a
perhaps infinite universe. When the new views of the Arctic get so
firm a hold that they lead to arctic colonization transarctic flying action, as the Copernican doctrine of a round world
led to the voyage of Magellan, then there is bound to follow a profound
change of thought and outlook, not so profound as that of the Middle
Ages, but nevertheless decisive enough to mark an epoch. in human thought.

Or perhaps the coming change of thought is more exactly analogous
to that connected with the development of ocean-going ships. From the
earliest prehistoric times large bodies of water were considered to
separate the lands; but with the development of sea-born commerce came
the idea that the oceans connect the lands. Gradually this view got a
firmer hold until it became a commonplace that a city 100 miles in the
interior was commercially and practically farther away than another 100
miles across the sea. Were it not for the strictly modern developments
of railways, Pittsburgh would be farther from New York than London is.
Similarly, air commerce will emphasize not only that the world is round
from north to south but also that the Arctic connects Alaska and Europe
quite as much as it separates them.

End
Copying
On our winter sledge Journeys in the Arctic we are sometimes storm-

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in the near future and that they will be of incalculable value in cutting
down time and distance between these points”. Since these men are in
high authority in two of the most progressive countries of the world,
what they have said is more significant than my having said the same
thing in a book called "The Northward Course of Empire", published about
a year before earlier (August 1922). I was merely the prophet of the change,
but they are bringing about the change itself.

End M No single event ever caused such a profound revolution in human
thought as did tThe voyage of Magellan’s ships around the world, for it
transformed the earth from a stationary pancake, housed under a firma-
ment, into one of a family of little spherical planets tagging along
behind a somewhat larger sun on a possibly eternal journey through a
perhaps infinite universe. When the new views of the Arctic get so
firm a hold that they lead to arctic colonization transarctic flying action, as the Copernican doctrine of a round world
led to the voyage of Magellan, then there is bound to follow a profound
change of thought and outlook, not so profound as that of the Middle
Ages, but nevertheless decisive enough to mark an epoch. in human thought.

Or perhaps the coming change of thought is more exactly analogous
to that connected with the development of ocean-going ships. From the
earliest prehistoric times large bodies of water were considered to
separate the lands; but with the development of sea-born commerce came
the idea that the oceans connect the lands. Gradually this view got a
firmer hold until it became a commonplace that a city 100 miles in the
interior was commercially and practically farther away than another 100
miles across the sea. Were it not for the strictly modern developments
of railways, Pittsburgh would be farther from New York than London is.
Similarly, air commerce will emphasize not only that the world is round
from north to south but also that the Arctic connects Alaska and Europe
quite as much as it separates them.

End
Copying
On our winter sledge Journeys in the Arctic we are sometimes storm-