stefansson-wrangel-09-16-036-002

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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