stefansson-wrangel-09-24-001-003

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Knight and I used to discuss the time when the Arctic
would be covered with airways and when it will be con-
venient - if not vital - for the Empire to have a landing-
place under its own flag somewhere on the northern frontier
of Asia. When you consider flying the ocean, you con-
sider next landing-place. In a direct line from
England across the Pole lay Wrangell Island, a British
discovery originally, a British territory more recently
through our own occupation and through Maurer's hoisting
of the flag in 1914. At present it was valued only by a
few, but in a decade it was certain to be valued by the
whole world.

If you look at a Mercator's map you are tricked into
a feeling that the north coasts of America, Europe and
Asia are roughly in a line with each other from east to
west. But if you examine a globe which correctly simulates
the earth, you find these lands form a horseshoe around a
body of water only just big enough to be called an ocean
rather than a sea. Asia lies opposite to Europe and
America rather as Africa lies opposite to France and Italy.
On that whole vast frontier of Soviet territory Wrangell is
the only red spot. There are many better islands, but we
have given Spitzbergen to Norway, Franz Josef land belongs
to Austria by discovery, Novaya Zemlya and the new Siberian
islands belong to Russia by the very same rights through