Omaha daily bee., 1911-05-21
VIKING INVASION OF FRANCE
Norwegian Students to Row a ShiI
Up Seine to Paris.
SERVANT GIRLS MAY STRIKE
working women of Three Kingdoms
in Movement to Fix Their
Hours and WaEes-Nansen
Defends Amundsen.
BY ERIC GRUNDMARK.

BY ERIC GRUNDMARK.
COPENHAGEN, May 2O.-(Special to The
Bee. )-There is tC be another Morse inva-
sion of France. II is to be in a regular
viking sea dragon and in regular viking
style. 1t was just 1000 years ago that
King Hugliek and his vikings landed on
the shores of Normandy and took that
principality for their own, thereby very
materially affecting the history of the
world.
A party of Norwegian students have had
an exast replica of Hugliek's ship built at
Bergen and they propose to row 1t Just as
their viking ancestors did from Bergen to
Rouen They probably will follow the an
cient kings course also up the Seine to
Paris.
Servant Girls Strike.
Denmark, Sweden and Norway are
threatened with a novel strike. The servant
girls of the Scandinavian countries have
organized and made these demands: First,
pthe abolition of any form of work between
the hours OF p. m. and I a. M; second,
extra payment for work done between these
hours; third, one afternoon a week free,
an entire day every second Sunday and a
minimum holiday OF two weeks every
year, wages to be paid as usual; fourth,
general increase of wages in accordance
with services rendered; fifth, servants
rooms must be sunlit and warm.
The struggle has become SO serious that
a general meeting of housewives has been
called to take place at Stockholm, when
it Is expected that most of the Ecandi-
navlan. towns will send delegates to dis
cuss the strike
hansen Defends Amundsen.
DR.. Fridtjof Nansen, the famous Arctic
explorer. has no patience with the crti-
cism of his fellow countryman, Captain
Raold Amundsen, in seeking to reach the
South pole. In a somewhat elaborate de-
tense OF Amundsen he says
"Amundsen's position was as follows:
After Cooks and Peary's return the inter-
est for his North Polar expedition ceased ;
the support he had been promised from
America, his last hope was withdrawn
and the Norwegian Parliament refused to
give him the additional grant required
No other resources were left. If nothing
were done, the money of his supporters
would be wasted. He had therefore either
to give up the whole undertaking. on the
preparation of which he had spent some
years Of his life, or to do something tended
to rouse the interest of the public at large
in order to put himself in a position to
raise the money still wanting. He chose
1.-THE latter course, and fearing that we
might advise him not to go to the
Antarctic, and considering IL his duty to
take the responsibility on himself alone
he decided to tell any of us, who had
assisted him with the preparations for the
North Polar expedition about his new de-
cision. And in this he was perhaps right
AS for myself, l must admit that IL 1
had known of his plan beforehand,
might possibly have warned him against
going SOUTH for fear that it would be too
hard a strain upon a man first to go
on a trying South Polar expedition and
then straight way to a drift voyage across
the North Polar Basin calculated to last
at least five or si& years l have never
heard of any plan approaching 1t, and
although my opinion is that Amundsen, II
anybody, is the very man to carry out
such a gigantic task, l should not have
cared to have taken the responsibility Of
encouraging him."
British Opinion.
AS regards the question whether
Amundsen had a right to enter into a field
of research, which had already been the
territory of the exploration Of others.
am certain that the president of the Royal
Geographical society expressed the feeling
OF the British nation, when he said that
no explorer obtains any vested right
merely by exploration, and that all foreign
competition on the Antarctic continent
should be welcomed wherever II appeared
This is in full accordance with the canon
OF the scientific world universally organ