stefansson-wrangel-09-08-009

Stefansson Arctic Ex.

March 10, 1922

Dear Taylor:

I am enclosing a copy of a long letter just written to the Hudson's Bay Company in Winnipeg.

When the story appears in the press, I suggest that you give out any information you have which the newspapers seem to want. While this is to be merely the truth, please be careful that they do not get any anti-American flase inferences out of anything you say. In the main, we want to make clear that we were just continuing the British occupation of British territory. Where the motive appears that we were afraid some other nation might occupy Wrangel Island, it is to be made clear that this was a general fear, for the land was in a sense open to anyone, but that specifically we thought the Japanese most likely to do this, partly because they are an exceedingly original and enterprising people and partly because they were already spreading north into Siberia.

If convenient, I hope you will have the name of our company put on at least one of the doors of your office, so that when the newspaper men come up there looking for the Stefansson Arctic Exploration and Development Company, they will find some trace of this high-sounding designation.

Mr. A. J. T. Taylor, Credit Foncier Building, Vancouver, British Columbia.