stefansson-wrangel-09-32-089r

THE WRANGEL ISLAND DOCUMENTS 377

I still maintain that Ada Blackjack was a real heroine and that
there is nothing to justify me in the faintest belief that she did
not do for Lorne all that she was able to do,

I am writing this article because I feel that I owe it to the public
and to a poor Eskimo woman who is being wronged and is help-
less to defend herself.

End of Statement by Mr. Knight

We are not reprinting in this book Mr. Noice’s press story of
Wrangel Island for two reasons: it is too long, and there is some
legal question as to the ownership of the copyright. A description
and summary of it will have to do.

Anyone who takes the trouble may read the press story as signed
by Mr. Noice (he now says that some of it was written by others
and did not meet his approval fully even at the time) in the London
Daily News]], Manchester Guardian, New York World, Toronto
Star, and in scores of other papers both in the Old and New World.
He will find it edited and condensed more or less and differing
therefore according to the varying styles of the papers that printed
it. In general it is very sensational, emphasizing the most grue-
some details and, therefore, very painful to the relatives and friends
of the dead. The general incorrectness of the impression given
can be seen by a comparison of it with the whole of the evidence
upon which it is alleged to be based (which we present in this book);
it can also be inferred from a reading of Mr. Noice’s explanation
and apology in Chapter XIV.

Since the full press story cannot be reproduced here the reader
of this volume cannot form an independent general judgment (as
we have said) without reference to newspaper files in a library.
In doing so he should look for papers printed between October
and December, 1923.

Samples at least of the specific misstatements, wrong infer-
ences, and unkindnesses of the press story can be and must be set
down here. Otherwise those who missed the press stories would
have no idea of the reasons why we cannot pass over in silence
even those charges which Mr. Noice admits (in his signed state-
ment in Chapter XIV) were written when his mind was not func-
tioning normally.

When Harold Noice found himself in possession of all the extant