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PREFACE

twenty-three, and Prime Minister, a more difficult task
than the command of a polar expedition, at twenty-four.
And Pitt was a real premier. Crawford proved a real
commander, too, though he was placed in authority for
tactical reasons only, as this book will tell.

Either Knight at twenty-eight with four years of hard
and varied arctic training, or Maurer at twenty-nine with
scarcely less experience, should have been the com-
mander. And they really were commanders, in the sense
that Crawford promised—and later kept the promise—to
do everything by their advice. It was really a smoothly
working committee-of-the-whole which governed the ex-
pedition. There was a theoretical danger that such
extreme democracy might not work. We need theorize
no longer, for the records are in. We now know that
democracy worked on Wrangel Island, that co-operation
never failed through the two years, and that the comrades
were faithful to their trust and loyal to each other liter-
ally unto death.

There is some slight hope—very slight—that other rec-
ords of the Wrangel Island expedition may be found to
supplement our present knowledge. But, practically, we
may feel that the evidence is all in. We are not afraid to
place the case unreservedly in the hands of the jury of
public opinion, as we do in this book. We who live have
much to regret; they who died have nothing they could
have wished to conceal.

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Neither in this preface nor anywhere in any way can
I offer adequate thanks or show sufficient admiration
for the manner in which the crushing loss of son, hus-