stefansson-wrangel-09-16-036

Wrangel

Given to Lomen to hand to Finley

Wrangel

October 3, 1926.

Dear Mr. Finley:

I have just had a telephone call from Carl Lomen, President of the huge reindeer corporation, with offices here and in Nome, Alaska. As you know, the Lomen family have lived in Nome for more than twenty years and have been connected with all the arctic expeditions of that period. They have, for instance, been Captain Amundsen's personal representatives on every one of his expeditions.

Mr. Lomen urges me to appeal to you in your double capacity of an editor of the New York Times and President of the American Geographical Society

The New York Times is undoubtedly the leading newspaper of the United States and is, in concequence, read by the most important people. You have been featuring arctic news for a long time and have in the main done it remarkably well. But your editorials have been as incorrect and inadequate as your news has been adequate and generally true. So that it has nearly invariably resulted that when one has read the editorial one has a less correct idea than after merely reading the news.

This has partly been a matter of omission, for the editorial writer of the Times seems to have the most extraordinary gaps in his knowledge. However, omissions are less easy to deal with and more difficult to correct than misstatements. You have one in to-day's editorial about Wrangel Island that has occurred several times before in the editorial columns of the Times althought the news columns have carried the contrary statement repeatedly.

To-day's Times says: "Baron Wrangel, after whom the island was named, 'discovered' it from the ice pack but never set foot on it. Nevertheless, he claimed the island as an appendage of Russia, contending that its situation north of Siberia should give Russia title."

The only correct thing in this quotation is that the island was named after Baron Wrangel, but it was so named by Americans who knew that Baron Wrangel had searched in vain for land in that quarter and had never seen any. The name was given partly, therefore, with a sort of idea of poetic justice and partly because Wrangel had been so intimately connected with Alaska later on and was remembered well and was favorably known to the Americans.

In speaking of somebody seeing Wrangel Island across ice, your editor evidently confused Lieutenant Wrangel of the Russian army with Captain Kellett of the British navy. It was he Kellett who saw it from the decks of the Herald across the ice although he also saw it from the top of Herald

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Island, naturally across the same ice. There is no evidence that Baron Wrangel either ever saw Wrangel Island or ever claimed to have seen it. All he was able to do was to find some Siberian natives who were able to tell him over again the story they had told many previous travelers to the effect that some of their people had seen land to the northeast of Cape Yakan. Anyone who has time can convince himself of this by going through Wrangel's own book of the journey and examining his map carefully.

All those details, and nearly everything else that is known about Wrangel Island, is summarized better than I can do it in a letter in Chapters I and XI of my book THE ADVENTURE OF WRANGEL ISLAND, published last year. Before that book was published, an authoritative summary of the history and political situation of Wrangel Island had been published in the Geographical Journal of the Royal Geographical Society of London for London December, 1923. Your editor could read that in the Journal itself or in my Appendix VI to THE ADVENTURE OF WRANGEL ISLAND.

Later on in the editorial the Times says: "No other nation had a valid claim to Wrangel Island." Apparently this means no other nation than Russia though it may conceivably mean no other nation than the United States. In either case this is wrong. Certainly the American claim was stronger than the Russian, since the Americans, although they had not discovered the island, had at least seen it, landed on it, and mapped it. The British, on the other hand, had discoverd the island in 1849, occupied it for six months in 1914, raising the British flag and taking formal posession by order of the Canadian Government on July 1st, 1914, and then reoccupied it and raised the flag again in September, 1921, this occupation lasting two years. Surely it is not a very judicious editorial statement to say that these two nations had no claim as against Russia which had not discovered the island, had not explored it, and whose ships and other expeditions had never seen it or landed on it until 1911.

I suppose the editorial is technically defensible, although it leaves a wrong impression, where it says about Wells, "He professed to be acting in the interests of the British Government but had not been authorized to represent it." As said, this is a sort of lawyer statement that gets by. The fact was that the majority of the first Baldwin Cabinet were behind what was done personally though no official action had been taken. This can best be seen by the fact that members of the Cabinet contributed money for the enterprise. For the rest, their support can be well inferred by if you read the preface written for the English edition of THE ADVENTURE OF WRANGEL ISLAND by L.S. Amery, who was First Lord of the Admiralty in the first Baldwin Cabinet and who is Colonial Secretary in the present Cabinet.

In the last paragraph of Colonel Amery's introduction, you will find the statement "The British government in the course of the abortive negotiations for a treaty with Soviet Russia last year, waived its claim." As you will see, Amery here refers to the action of the Labor Government which was diametrically opposed to the Baldwin Cabinet in the policy as to Wrangel Island. You can see from the preface as a whole what a grief this

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action was to Colonel Amery, and I could make it much more clear if I were to show you our direct correspondence.

But the most important point is how far the Times editor is from giving a square deal to the efforts that have been made from Alaska to hold Wrangel Island for the United States. The Times would, of course, be within its rights in disagreeing with this American attempt, but it is hardly square partly to ignore and partly to missate the situation, as the Times editorial does.

All this, as I said in the beginning, is the more true and the more strange in view of the largely correct news reports of the Times itself, from which your editor, if he had no time for anything else, could easily have rectified many of his wrong notions.

It is a grief to me to have to express myself so strongly with reference to the Times which has in general been so very kind to me. But the time has come when somebody has to do something, or at least say something.

Mr. John H. Finley, New York Times, Times Square, New York.