stefansson-wrangel-09-25-005-015

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definite information on the point, but my judgment was that the majority
of the Cabinet probably thought that Wrangell Island, for the time being at
least, should be considered a part of the Empire without being a part of
Canada. The action they took was to ask me to go to London and present
the same case in the same way to the British Government, or at least to
those members of the Imperial Cabinet who seemed directly concerned.

When I got to England I found that some at least of the
members of the Imperial Cabinet considered it important to take at once
foresighted action with regard to the approaching development of the polar
regions, and particularly with regard to Wrangell Island, but that the
Government as a whole and the nation were obsessed with the tense home and
foreign problems of unemployment, Russia, the Rhur Ruhr and France. The feeling
appeared to be in Ottawa that Wrangell Island was an Imperial concern; but
in London it was looked upon as a Canadian concern and it was desired to
postpone action until the Canadian Prime Minister should come to London in
the autumn to take part in the Imperial Conference.

The season of navigation in the Arctic north of Bering
Straits in an average year will be from late July to late September. Our
party were now in their second year of isolation. With my view of the food
resources of the polar regions and my confidence in the men themselves, I
had not been greatly worried for their safety up till now. But I considered
that facing a third winter, the question was becoming definitely one of life
and death. My private resources had been spent, my wealthy personal friends
were mostly in the United States where I have lived all my life, and it did
not seem to them that they should be called upon to assist me in an enterprise
the whole bearing of which was so entirely British. The Canadians seemed
to feel that the British ought to do something, and the British evidently