stefansson-wrangel-09-32-080v

360 THE ADVENTURE OF WRANGEL ISLAND

greater reluctance than any other. Indeed, I have decided several
times to remove it from the manuscript, but each time it has been
reinstated. Mr. Noice's subsequent conduct cannot be understood
by me, and therefore presumably not by the reader, without some
appraisal of his mental processes and motives. We must, there-
fore, discuss two illnesses which he suffered, and must relate what
Mr. Noice himself has said and implied about the feelings of injury
and anger which developed in his mind. These are among the few
motives known to us that go to explain—inadequately, it is true—
some of his strange actions later.

Here have been omitted several pages of text made unnecessary
by the signed retraction and apology from Mr. Noice, received
just before going to press, which admits in essence what the deleted
paragraphs proved, giving as reason for what he did that he was
then on the verge of a nervous breakdown. See his own statement
printed as Chapter XIV.

When the Donaldson returned to Nome from Wrangel Island the
tragic story she brought percolated through the community and
somehow got on to the cables, so that the first news received by the
world was a brief statement unauthorized by Mr. Noice or by
anyone connected with our company, and also partly at variance
both with the cable later sent to the newspapers by Mr. Noice and
with the facts as we now know them.

I was in England September 1st, 1923, when the news arrived.
One of my first thoughts was that, while the truth must not be
suppressed, it was important that we prevent, as far as possible,
the ordinary distortions which the press is accustomed to give to
any events that happen in remote regions under conditions not
familiar to the average reader. I knew even before the details came
out that freezing or starvation was not likely to have played an
important part, but I knew equally that the press always assigns
any polar tragedy to the routine reasons of hunger and frost. Their
doing so now would go a long way towards making fruitless the
work for which our young men had died. The diaries and expe-
dition records have since clearly established that my premonitions
were correct, but I was unable to influence materially the version
conveyed by the press to the public because the form in which Mr.
Noice sent out his narrative made my views of its meaning continue
to seem unreasonable.