§ ADMIRAL WALCOTTsaid, he wished to ask the right hon. Baronet the First Lord of the Admiralty whether, as it was believed some objection seemed to be made to granting clasps to those who were to receive the Arctic Expedition Medals according to the number of times they had served in the Polar Regions, he would have any objection to having the number of times stamped on the bar of the medal in lieu of clasps?
§ SIR CHARLES WOODsaid, that the question whether medals should be given for each Arctic voyage had been considered soon after the question had arisen relative to the granting of medals, and subsequently he had asked whether those officers and men who had been in the Antarctic and the Niger Expeditions were not to be included in the grant? One of the officers engaged in the Arctic Expeditions had also inquired whether it was intended to grant a medal for each year in which the claimants bad been in the Arctic Expeditions, and a clasp for each voyage, because in that case he would be entitled to nine medals and twenty clasps. He thought that we had gone far enough in discrediting medals by the profusion with which they had been already granted—and the case put by the hon. and gallant Member for Christchurch had reduced the argument against that profusion ad absurdum. In the case of the officers engaged in the late war forty years ago, one simple medal was granted for all the services performed; and he thought the best course to pursue in the present case was to issue one simple medal for the Arctic voyages. The medal was ready to be issued. There was no bar on which the number of voyages could be engraved, and if that addition was to be made to them, it would require the issue of 48,000 circulars, and the reconstruction of the medal.