stefansson-wrangel-09-32-083r

365 THE WRANGEL ISLAND DOCUMENTS

into the mere contention that the Wrangel Island party had been
lacking in judgment or skill. When I reminded him that he and
Knight had been shipmates on my expedition and that a vote of
their comrades would certainly rank Knight’s ability as high as
his, he met the issue only by doubting that such would be the
result of a vote.

In portions of this interview Mr. Noice seemed to be in a mood
of exaltation. He asserted firmly and repeatedly that neither
money nor influence nor any consideration of the feelings of others
would induce him to swerve one iota from the truth. He would
tell the exact facts no matter who got hurt. I reminded him
that he was not sure of the exact facts and that he had better
temper his righteousness with mercy, at least towards the rela-
tives of the dead. But this did not seem to impress him at the time.

Mr. Noice said that he had already written for the press more
than half of the story which he was basing on the diaries. He
thought some of the installments had already been sent out and
had perhaps gone to press, but he was willing to let me read over
for minor corrections the ones that had not been sent out, adding
that he would review my emendations before they went to the
printer. I declined, feeling that, since I did not have a chance to
study the documents and write an account which I knew was
truthful, I had better not have any responsibility for any of it.⁴

⁴ In the part of the book removed after our acceptance of Mr. Noice’s
retraction (printed as Chapter XIV) we deleted a full discussion of
how Mr. Noice for several months prevented both the relatives and me from
seeing the diary of Lorne Knight and certain other of the most important
papers. We also discussed and analyzed the motives he then gave for this
line of conduct; that discussion and analysis are now replaced by his own
signed explanation to the effect that he was on the verge of a nervous collapse
and would not have done what he did had his mind been functioning normally.
His present contention that he published his Wrangel story while his judgment
was temporarily far from normal is, I feel, best substantiated by the con-
sideration that the whole tendency of what he did was to injure himself even
more than it could injure either the memories of the dead or the cause for
which they were working. Their memories will not suffer permanently, though
they have been put in temporary eclipse; the cause they died for has suffered,
for the governments of Great Britain and Canada were undoubtedly influenced
unfavorably by the public feeling of disapproval of the expedition created or
accentuated by Mr. Noice’s newspaper story. Another point to bear out what
Mr. Noice now says (in his signed apology) about his temporary mental con-
dition is, as stated elsewhere, that he actually seemed to be sincere at the
time in the view he expressed that he had a “discovery right” to Lorne
Knight’s diary which was one of the reasons which made it morally proper
for him not only to sell a story based on that diary but also to tear out and
destroy parts of it.