To the Editor:
We set out to climb Everest, not “for England” as Steven Marcus claims (“Mt. Everest and the British National Spirit,” October), but for its own sake. It was natural that we wanted to succeed and consequently to do everything possible to ensure success. To sneer at the preparations we made to guard against mishaps and to avoid another failure—preparations made in the light of the hardships and failures of past expeditions—seems to me an odd attitude enough. It is, however, sad to find the spirit in which we approached the problem twisted and held up to ridicule. We knew that unless we overcame our individual ambitions or fears, unless we succeeded in subduing the personal point of view and combining together, we should not reach the top. The result was a measure of our comradeship. “Team spirit” is an admittedly overworked term but it stands for something fine in whatever sphere it is applied—too fine to merit the popular treatment of “debunking” in this way.
I feel that the COMMENTARY really shows the inadequacy of my own story of the expedition, as recorded in The Ascent of Everest (the American title of the book, The Conquest of Everest, was not of my choosing). This I readily admit. I can only offer as explanation the fact that I have never written a book before and am, no doubt, a poor hand at it; and the fact that I had to complete it by the end of August and could not start before the end of July. In that month I was working not only against time, but in the face of very great difficulties, the results of the tremendous public excitement over the event, at a time when I was already very tired after eight hectic months of planning, preparations, and the expedition itself. Poor excuses, I know, but very real ones. I would like to assure Mr. Marcus that we were, despite our determination to work together, a very human party; had I been allowed more time I would have tried to write something of this in the book. I do feel, though, that the human side cannot have escaped the notice of those who have heard the story related in our lectures, whether in America or elsewhere.
Is it possible that Mr. Marcus has interpreted some of the reactions of the popular press as being those of the members of my expedition?
Brigadier Sir John Hunt,
CBE, DSO Camberley, Surrey
England
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Mr. Marcus writes:
It was not at all my intention to hold the Everest expedition up to ridicule, and certainly not to sneer at the preparations made to guard against mishaps. Sir John may be justly proud of the success of his expedition and of the careful and skilled leadership which brought it off so safely. I was trying only to suggest that in exploration, as in so many other things, the virtues of the modern world—indeed, its most civilized virtues—have involved the loss of some older values which seem to have been inseparable from some older vices, and that a certain confusion results when one tries to pretend that the older values are still being upheld. It is not Sir John’s fault that this should be so, nor would any humane person wish to turn the clock back: five men died on Scott’s expedition to the South Pole.
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