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was committing and then to get Mr. Lomen to talk things over with him
and show him the wisdom of making as full restitution as was now pos-
sible. Mr. Lomen arrived in New York in December. After [Erok] day of
my landing in New York Mr. Noice had refused to see me or anyone whom
he considered a friend of mine, even when they had also been friends
of his, with the one exception, so far as I know, of Mr. Laurie Erskine.
But Mr. Erskine had been unable to get Mr. Noice to make any restitution,any results. partly no doubt
because he did not understand the situation in Alaska and therefore
did not know whether to believe Mr. Noice's his version of certain incid-
ents or ours. Mr. Lomen was in no such doubt, however, for he had been
"on the inside" in all the negotiations. He was, therefore, able to
speak frankly and decisively and to point out to Mr. Noice how easy it
would be to disprove in court or anywhere else many of his important
allegations.

A few weeks of thinking this over brought action. On
February 4th, 1924, Mr. J. I, Knight received from Mr. Noice through the mail at
McMinnville, Oregon, pages 9-14, 19-22,27-40,45-46 and the portion torn
from page 41, all from Volume I, and some other papers. At the same
time Mr. A. J. T. Taylor received through the mail in Toronto some
stray papers and what purported to be the entire diary and notes given
to Mr. Noice by Ada Blackjack at Wrangell Island and Nome. There were
now missing so far as we knoew, only pages 33-42 from Volume II of
Knight’s diary. There might, of course, be other loose papers that we
do not know about.

For the time being we could not understand why ten pages
of Volume II of Knight's diary had been withheld when the other pages
were returned. But this was explained when the New York World and
other papers both in American and Europe printed the statement which I
have referred to above as the first contradiction of the original
Harold Noice story of Wrangell Island. The astonishing nature of this