stefansson-wrangel-09-16-036-001

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 know-
ledge. 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. Never-
theless, 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