stefansson-wrangel-09-31-093r

THE SUMMER OF 1923 AND THE TRAGIC NEWS 145

experience than my summer of dealing with the British
Government—cabinet ministers, undersecretaries, ad-
mirals and generals, technical experts, officers and civil
servants of every rank. Although I came there ostensibly
to bring information and recommend action, I learned
more than I was able to teach. They were technical
experts in the true sense, men of scholarship and wide
outlook. To few of them were the subjects I presented
new, and in many cases their range of information was
wider than mine. There were manuscripts, for instance,
in the Admiralty, both maps and journals, which showed
the historical case for the British ownership of Wrangel
Island to be even stronger than I had realized. They
also had records of more American landings than I had
known about, making it still more evident that if Great
Britain were to withdraw her claims those of the United
States would remain strong and clear as compared with
the Russian.

Although my original introduction had been to the
Colonial Office, it soon became obvious that the subject
really belonged to the Foreign Office. Nevertheless, the
practical sides of the question came under the Admiralty
and the Air Ministry. In that connection I had constant
dealings with the First Lord of the Admiralty, Colonel L.
S. Amery, and various of his admirals and captains in an
official and semi-official capacity. I always had the feel-
ing that much of what progress I made was due to Colonel
Amery’s constant interest and his thorough grasp of the
arctic situation both in its economic and political aspects.

I learned from Colonel Amery some of the steps in
the development of British territorial policy in the Ant-
arctic in which he had been a prime mover. The glamor
of the voyages of Scott, Shackleton, and Mawson had