First, why is this a "spoiler"? The letter's contents don't give away anything. It has nothing to do with the film, which is the normal reason for using the word "spoiler". There's nothing in this that constitutes a "spoiler" by any stretch of the imagination.
Second, it's long been known that Scott wrote letters to his wife, his backers, even "to the public", while he lay in his tent for nine days, dying. The existence and substance, in most cases even the precise content, of these letters have been known since Scott's and his party's bodies were discovered. None of this is news.
Finally, Scott's letters may be sad, given the circumstances, but, at the risk of sounding callous, so what? They're a part of Scott's story but largely irrelevant to the question of why Scott got himself into the hole in which he and his colleagues wound up.
Had Scott learned from his own and others' experience, had he exercised better judgment in selecting knowledgeable and qualified men to go with him to the Pole, had he adapted his plans to incorporate sensible means and equipment in polar travel, he would most likely have survived. This would have meant finding solutions to depoting stores (particularly paraffin, which posed a problem of which he was well aware), looking for solid polar experience in his men over naive enthusiasm, and most of all not relying on the discredited method of man-hauling, which made it inevitable he'd be out on the ice well past the point where temperatures would be dropping sharply.
A dram of scotch for Scott? For what? His maudlin, self-justifying letters? To celebrate failure and incompetence? Scott was brave, but this century-long insistence by many people on cloaking his ineptitude in a false image of brilliance and supreme ability, undone only by "bad luck", is ridiculous and insulting.
Bottom line, Scott would never have had to write such a letter had he had the ability to learn and plan effectively in the first place. We can respect the man's bravery without manufacturing him into a fake genius.
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