Letter from Vilhjalmur Stefansson to Alfred J. T. Taylor, 10 March 1922

I am enclosing a copy of a long letter just
written to the Hudson's Bay Company in Winnipeg.

When the story appears in the press, I sug
gest that you give out any information you have which the news
papers seem to want. While this is to be merely the truth,
please be careful that they do not get any anti-American flase
inferences out of anything you say. In the main, we want to
make clear that we were just continuing the British occupation
of British territory. Where the motive appears that we were
afraid some other nation might occupy Wrangel Island, it is
to be made clear that this was a general fear, for the land
was in a sense open to anyone, but that specifically we thought
the Japanese most likely to do this, partly because they are an
exceedingly original and enterprising people and partly because
they were already spreading north into Siberia.

If convenient, I hope you will have the
name of our company put on at least one of the doors of your
office, so that when the newspaper men come up there looking
for the Stefansson Arctic Exploration and Development Company,
they will find some trace of this high-sounding designation.