stefansson-wrangel-09-14-033-003

-3-

information for the book that I have already agreed to write as a history
of Wrangel Island. I think as you say, a second book could be written
along a different line covering Lorne's career in the North. If we do
not get that settled before January we can talk about it when I come out
to the Pacific Coast. Ellison-White can tell you when that will be,
but I think it is around the middle of January.

As to your suggestion to Noice that he write imme-
diately to the Galles, Maurers and Crawfords - the Maurers and Crawfords
were well informed, although I am not sure whether Noice wrote to them.
We were much distressed to learn from the Galles that they had received
no letter and had been almost wholly in the dark about details for a long
time. By a peculiar misfortune a telegram which they sent to the Harvard
Club was put unopened into an envelope and mailed to England. It was thus
more than two weeks from the time they sent it till I was able to reply
by cable. I then cabled Noice urging him to write the Galles immediately,
also cabling them that he would do so. Noice told my secretary that he
would write.

I know very little. I had a brief conversation with
him the day after landing. He had then an attitude that seemed so extra-
ordinary to me that I took it for partial insanity. Since then he has
been in hiding, not only from me but from all those of his friends who he
knows are my friends also. He has answered neither telegrams nor tele-
phone calls. We know he is at the Waldorf Hotel but he has left instruc-
tions to be reported out. The only way to find him would be to waylay him
and, of course, that is hardly our place. I am, accordingly, very badly
informed even now about various things.

As to the story that Noice has written and which is
now being published. I arrived too late to examine it in any case, for
most of it had been mailed out. I made some suggestions to him about
toning down any very unpleasant features but found him fanatic on the
subject of "telling the whole truth whenever necessary." I tried to
reason that doing so was seldom necessary. He took an attitude so
antagonistic to me that I decided as the less of two evils not to ask to
see even those parts of the story which had not been mailed out, for thus
I shall be able to say that the last part of it as well as the first was
without my knowledge and consent. If I read any of the story and changed
even one or two lines, I should be under suspicion of having doctored it.
Noice would probably come out with a statement alleging that the story as
edited by me was false and would thus create a worse impression than what
will now probably be created by the story as written.

I am answering your letter paragraph by paragraph and
see by your page 3 that I may have been slightly in error about your idea
of a memorial, for there you speak of what may be done by the British Gov-
ernment. The British Government has never, so far as I know, erected
memorials even for their greatest heroes among the explorers. Those
memorials have always been erected by private subscription. I am afraid,
therefore, that we will have to arrange for our memorial in the way I have