stefansson-wrangel-09-18-037

Galle

October 8, 1924.

Dear Mrs. Galle:

I wrote you from Australia about all the circumstances of the little bookcontaining Milton's fragmentary notes which I did not send at that time since carrying them myself appeared to be safer than trusting them to the mail. The trouble in sending a box through the mail between countries is that the customs officers are likely to open the package or to delay it. I have sometimes had parcels lost that way. A package of documents sent to me from England this summer, for instance, was sent back to England again through an error by the customs officers, and has not yet arrived in England so we do not know if it will eventually be lost.

I am to-day sending the box to you by registered mail.

I sent you from Australia the typed transcript which we have made to the best of our ability. I should be very grateful to you if you let me know about any discrepencies you discover - if you think that we have misread some notation or if you notice that we have omitted something.

The book about Wrangel Island will appear in a few weeks. Milton's notes have been very valuable in straightening out certain things otherwise hard to understand, and I have used them somewhat in the body of the book. But the book itself had unfortunately been written before I got the little box and it was too late to completely remodel it. I have therefore written a separate section in the appendix on the basis of the notes.

I am hoping very much that both you and all the other relatives will be pleased with the book when it comes out. It has been very difficult to write for many reasons but especially because of the part played in it by Harold Noice.

An attorney for Mr. Noice has recently explained to me that some at least of the untruths in his published story were put into print by him because his wife insisted on it. It seems that he had originally told her these untruths expecting them to go no farther, but believing them completely she insisted on his publishing them and he did not have the courage to own up to her that he had been telling her fibs. Apparently she understands the situation now, for the lawyer has informed me that they have been permanently separated. The separation took place in Brazil and she left Mr. Noice behind there while she went

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to Europe. No one in New York seems to know whether Mr. Noice is still in Brazil, although it is assumed he has returned to the United States. What he did about the Wrangel Island papers had induced all his friends in New York to break connection with him (or at least all friends that I know about) so that we have no way of finding out about his movements.

It hurts me a good deal to have to publish the things about him which I shall have to print because of his parents in Los Angeles. I saw them shortly before leaving for Australia. At that time they explained to a roomful of people what friends their son and I were and how much I had done for him. I did not have the heart at that time to say anything and evidently Noice himself had told them nothing. They were also wholly unaware that he had treated his former comrades on the Wrangel Island party as he had done. This and other things have made me very reluctant to stress certain points as strongly as I might. I hope you will sympathize a little with his parents and even with him, for he seems to have been temporarily unbalanced last autumn, and that you won't blame me for shielding him too much. To the best of my judgment I have explained enough of his misdoings to completely relieve the memory of your son and the other boys from the implied and expressed slurs which he put up on them. My point of view always has been to clear their memories with as little blackening of his character as possible.

I shall be out of New York for the next week but shall receive here any letter you may write.

Mrs. Harry Galle, New Braunfels, Texas.