stefansson-wrangel-09-11-040-001

W. W. Cory

March 19, 1923.

Dear Mr. Cory:

Sometime soon (I do not know how soon) I am coming to
Ottawa with the hope of discussing with yourself, with the Minister,
and the various officers of your Department the future policy of the
Government with regard to aviation bases in the polar regions. Mean-
time as a basis of part of our talk, I want to report the following:

Friday I lunched at his invitation with Brigadier-
General Mitchell, Assistant Chief of Aviation for the United States
Army. General Mitchell has spent three years in Alaska. I found him
to be even more enthusiastic than myself about aviation possibilities.
I suggested that the great commercial uses of the airplane during the
next fifty years would be in Brazil, in Siberia, in the mainland of
Canada, and it the polar regions, taking the importance to be in the
order named. General Mitchell agreed with me but considered that
transpolar air commerce would within fifty years prove itself to be
the most important of these four subdivisions. I found him to be in
general in agreement with everything which I have set down in my chap-
ter on transpolar air commerce in the "Northward Course of Empire," --
of which I think I sent you a copy last fall at the time of publication.

General Mitchell said there had been keen disappointment in
aviation circles in Washington two years ago when the announcement was
made that we had put a colony on Wrangel Island. I understood, although
he did not say so definitely, that he used his influence to get the
Department of State to issue a protest. Of course, there is no ground
in international law for such a protest. Furthermore, I am not informed
whether such a protest was ever actually made by the American Govern-
ment to the Canadian Government. General Mitchell implied that it had
been but did not say so outright, and I did not care to ask him
directly, as I knew the information would necessarily be available in
Ottawa. General Mitchell thinks Wrangel Island as an air base is just
as important for the United states as it is for Japan, Russia, or the
British Empire. I did not argue this with him but I cannot agree with
it on any assumption of the present territorial extention of the United
States.

At the suggestion of certain friends I sent a copy of "The
Northward Course of Empire" the other day to General Patrick, Chief of
the Air Service of the United States Army. I have received from him
a letter of which I append a copy.

Mr. W. W. Cory, Commissioner,
Northwest Territories Branch,
Ottawa, Ontario.