We are not going forward like a lot of schoolboys on a holiday picnic but rather as a party of men who know what they have got to face. I for one am sure that the journey will be no child’s game but a hard one, as hard as any have ever been[,] and the Pole will not be gained without a terrible struggle…. If man can make for success we have the right stuff with us, but as I say[,] when man has done all he can do he can only trust with God for the rest.
—H. R. Bowers,
from a letter to E. Bowers,
October 27, 1911