stefansson-wrangel-09-32-081v

362 THE ADVENTURE OF WRANGEL ISLAND

to me. Mr. Taylor expected this would be in a week or two, when
I arrived in New York from England, but (as related elsewhere)
Mr. Noice did not so transfer the documents.

Since we are entering here on a subject that involves unpleasantly
both the living and the dead, we will point out that Mr. Noice
has forced us to it by publishing various charges in such a way
that they were printed in the newspapers of nearly every country.
We have not replied in the press; silence is, therefore, impossible
in a book which must expect as its readers chiefly persons who
have seen and remembered the press allegations.

We depart here slightly from the chronological arrangement to
say that a few days later in New York Mr. Noice told several
people variants conflicting with the story he had told Mr. Taylor.
These have been reported to me both verbally and in writing by
some of those to whom he told them. Among other differences,
the New York statements gave another explanation of the motive
for removing parts of the diary. Mr. Noice now said that there
were in the diary things which, if published, would enable me
(Stefansson) to shift from myself much of the blame which I was
carrying in the public mind for what had happened at Wrangel
Island, transferring it to Knight and his companions. He believed
that I would so use the diary if I got possession of it. To prevent
that, he would therefore, remove and destroy all those pages which
would give me any power to shift blame from myself to others.
Another difference in the New York story was that, while he had
told Taylor that the advances on Wrangel Island had been made
by the men and rejected by Ada Blackjack, he now said that they
had been made by her and rejected by them.

[The preceding paragraphs have been retained in the text even
after we have received Mr. Noice’s signed retraction because it is
necessary the reader shall know what reasons Mr. Noice gave out
at the time for his having torn out certain parts of the diary and
erased others.

If the reader turns to Appendix V and reads the complete
transcript of all we have been able to recover of the pages and
paragraphs torn out or destroyed by Mr. Noice, he will see more
than one argument why they should not have been printed. I
have weighed these arguments to the best of my ability and have
sought advice from many persons. We have decided to print what