stefansson-wrangel-09-32-082r

THE WRANGEL ISLAND DOCUMENTS 363

we possess without omission for the following reasons: (1) The
notes were specifically left me by Lorne Knight to use as what he
considered necessary protection for the good name of himself and
his companions. (2) If we omitted anything of what Mr. Noice
tore out the reader could not judge for himself on the same basis
as we do the validity of the reasons given by Mr. Noice for having
permanently destroyed certain parts of the diary and temporarily
suppressed others. Finally (3) it might create an unfavorable
impression if we omitted anything of consequence from the diary
upon which our narrative depends—a book that purports to be
frank would not then be frank. The portions of Lorne Knight’s
diary that were torn out by Mr. Noice and eventually returned to
us, are therefore printed as Appendix V to this book.]

On the day following my arrival from England I had a discussion
with Mr. Noice. I did not see him again until a year later when he
came to offer retraction of parts of his published story of the
tragedy, for he had avoided seeing me meantime and we had been
able to deal with him only through intermediaries. Our one inter-
view can be summarized briefly.

I asked Mr. Noice for a statement and questioned him only
enough to induce him to continue until the statement was reason-
ably complete. On his way towards Wrangel he had taken a
passenger steamer from Seattle with his shoulder in considerable
pain, for he was still wearing a cast.₃ He did not remember ever
having expressed any eagerness to go to Wrangel Island and felt
that he had been doing me a great favor in going at all. When
he got to Nome he found the Americans there unfriendly to me
because they thought I was trying to get an American island
(Wrangel) away from the Americans and secure it for the British.
He had tried to explain there that my idea had been to continue
British possession to forestall Japanese occupation or Russian, and
with no thought that the United States wanted the island. The
people at Nome had taken little stock in this explanation and had
continued unfriendly. This he found had a tendency to increase
the prices of various things he had to buy at Nome. He had felt
that the lives of the men in Wrangel Island were in danger and

³One of the things deleted from this chapter is a long account of this
operation, and its effect on the mental condition of Mr. Noice—which result
he now himself states—see Chapter XIV.