Outside of Time in the Antarctic

Francis Spufford, I May Be Some Time: Ice and the English Imagination:

It seems appropriate that it should also have been in Antarctica that the Edwardian world lasted longest. After the period ended a tiny bubble of pre-war feeling and expectation persisted there in the form of Shackleton’s marooned Endurance expedition. Probably Shackleton’s men were the last Europeans on the planet still inhabiting the lost paradigm in 1916, year of the Somme: ‘I suppose our experience was unique,’ he wrote. The war had already just begun when they sailed in August 1914 to try the first crossing of the Antarctic continent, but the England they left was in the very first phase of high excitement. All they had seen was the Edwardian nation mobilising, not a single casualty list published, not a single telegram of condolence sent. The war had no colours yet except the patriotic ones. They heard their last instalment of news in Buenos Aires in October, where the received wisdom still held that the battles would end crisp and quick within six months. After that they passed beyond communication, 'not without regret’ at their exclusion from the great adventure, as if the European catastrophe already unrolling behind them were a spreading stain they had accidentally outrun. […] His book South (1919) best conveys the bursting of the bubble in an exchange of dialogue as sudden and blunt as the inrush of the new world that it brought about. As soon as the three scarecrow-like travellers had established who they were to Mr Sorlle, the manager, and what they were doing wandering through his whaling station frightening children, 'Tell me, when was the war over?’ Shackleton asked. 'The war is not over,’ he answered. 'Millions are being killed. Europe is mad. The world is mad.’