Part III: Antarctica and Academe - Scott Polar Research Institute

around me the strongest team of officers that the College had ever had... and this
must surely be the launching pad for future progress. She realised that it must be
disappointing to me to find some Fellows still voted against on the important issues.
They were not voting against me, but on misguided loyalties and misplaced
compassion "The other side played to the gallery on the sympathy ticket - you won
the stalls and the grand circle on the responsibility ticket!" The Fellows who were
won over on the sympathy ticket were Fellows who are not engaged with the College
and do not understand the importance of the issues they are asked to take decisions
on and far less do they understand the implications of their decisions. "I believe they
would be shocked if confronted with the idea that their vote was not actually in
support of you....You are witnessing the worst elements of College politics - it is a
forum for the generation of collective individualism!" So far my Mastership had
been bedevilled by a few disaffected Fellows who trumped up unsupported charges
and managed to manipulate the weak ones.
What I had been through with my critics was the equivalent of the debate: is it better
to be loved than feared, or the reverse? She quoted Machiavelli to me: "The answer is
that it is desirable to be both, but because it is difficult to join them together, it is
much safer for a prince to be feared than loved, if he is to fail in one of the two.
Because we can say this about men in general: they are ungrateful, changeable,
simulators and dissimulators, runaways in danger, eager for gain; while you do well
by them they are all yours; they offer you their blood, their property, their lives, their
children, when need is far off; but when it comes near you, they turn about.....men
have less hesitation in injuring one who makes himself loved than one who makes
himself feared, for love is held by a chain of duty, which, since men are bad, they
break at every chance for their own profit; but fear is held by a dread of punishment,
that never fails you. Nevertheless, the wise prince makes himself feared in such a
way that, if he does not gain love, he escapes hatred; because to be feared and not to
be hated can well be combined .....A wise prince, then, is not troubled about a
reproach for cruelty by which he keeps his subjects united and loyal because giving a
very few examples of cruelty, he is more merciful than those, who through too much
mercy, let evils continue, from which result murders or plunder, because the latter
commonly harm a whole group, but those executions that come from the prince
harm individuals only." (Of course, she said, as a strong supporter of womens'
rights, Machiavelli excluded women from this discourse!). However a twentieth
century Master is far from a sixteenth century Prince, and I had was saddeened that I
should have attracted such hatrred. Nor had I been cruel, quite the reverse.
I was also heartened by a letter from Paul Luzio, (later to become an extremely good
Senior Tutor) who had been an active member of the Working Party. He regretted the
resignation of Fellows and the closeness of the vote on the re-appointment of the
Bursar, but believed it was right for matters to be brought to a head. He was pleased
to note that the newly elected and re-elected officers were all supportive of my
position and in this sense, the Committees were likely to be stronger. "In reality there
is now a much clearer mandate for the development of the College under your
leadership than there has been at any time since I have been a fellow." Paul later was
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