stefansson-wrangel-09-31-012v

xxii INTRODUCTION

he had been associated with through the solitude of one
and a half years in the fastness of the Arctic.

I had the good fortune to know Milton Galle, a lad
of twenty with a brilliant mentality and a charming per-
sonality, when he lived with us in our home for a few
weeks before they left for Wrangel Island. I met Fred-
erick Maurer at my home, where Lorne brought him
from his Chautauqua lectures, and I liked him. Allan
Crawford, Lorne brought to our home, where Lorne’s
mother took great pride in preparing a splendid dinner
for him and Mr. Stefansson. Milton Galle was there
spending a week with us. This day, for an hour or so,
is all that I was ever permitted to be in company with
Allan Crawford. This occasion and the presence of all
of the boys, except Frederick Maurer, will always be a
bright recollection. What an enjoyable two hours we
had together!

I want to pay my respects to Harold Noice with regard
to the narratives and charges concerning the Wrangel
Island expedition which he has broadcasted through the
newspapers. He was so fed up on notoriety, spiced with
egotism, that he lost all sense of the propriety and fitness
of things; and When he returned from Wrangel Island in
1923 with the startling news of the tragedy, he became
intoxicated with his own greatness and insane over his
imagined authority, and, with a high hand, he dealt out
to himself glory, ignoring the rights and feelings of
others.

He appropriated Lorne’s diary and sold it for his own
gain, he mutilated it and gave a coloring to his writings
which was unfair to the unfortunate boys and painful to
their people. In one paragraph he speaks of Lorne as his
“Pal,” his “Trailmate” and his “Friend,” because he