January 26.

I enjoyed Anvar Khan's well-composed article on Scott and the

Antarctic, but I cannot accept it is more than a narrow and unjust point

of view (January 21).

Scott's and Amundsen's race to the South Pole in 1912 is a story of

such Homeric proportions and historical example that the difference

between success and failure is hardly relevant.

It has to be remembered that the expedition included scientific

exploration, and one has but to turn to the account of one of its

intrepid young scientists, Apsley Cherry Gerrard in his The Worst

Journey in the World, to learn of its magnificent fulfilment.

Allied to this was the product of the official photographer, Herbert

Ponting, who along with Dr Edward Wilson and his watercolours brought

back a superb and graphic record of Antarctica and of those early

explorers of a continent in those days as forlorn as the moon.

All these events occurred in an age of empire glory, when the rallying

words of Tennyson, the late Victorian poet laureate, were still ringing

in the ears of the Edwardians: ''To strive, to seek, to find, and not to

yield'' -- so fittingly quoted on the tomb of Scott and his companions

in those frozen wastes.

That the Discovery, which, of course, relates to Scott's first

expedition of 1902 and not to the second, has found a safe haven at

Dundee may, I trust, help to stimulate and inspire a healthy spirit of

adventure and endurance in the youth of today as an antidote to the

prevalence of unemployment and the social dangers of our times.

John M Ramsay,

1 Carters Place,

Irvine.