In the meantime, I was attacked for delay. My data was finally sent to the University of Copenhagen. A verdict of "Unproven" was rendered.
Thereupon, Mr. Peary and his friends at once shouted "Fraud!" The press parrot-like re-echoed that shout. With this unfair insinuation there came to me the biting sting of a burning electric shock as the wires quivered all around the world. At the Congressional investigation, a year later, the Peary data was shown to be useless as proof. It was a verdict precisely like that of Copenhagen on mine, but the press did not print it. Did the Peary interests have any control over the American press or its sources of news distribution?
After the call for "proof" came charges, from members of the Peary cabal, that I was unable to take observations. Mr. Peary was so much better equipped than I to do so! Moreover, he had had the able scientific assistance of Bartlett and—the negro.
When I was at the Pole the sun was 12° above the horizon. At the time Peary claims he was there it was less than 7°. Difficult as it is to take observations at 12°, because of refracted light, any accurate observation at 7° is impossible. It is indeed, questionable if an observation could be made at all at the time when Peary claims to have been at the Pole.
Finding that, despite all charges, the public believed in me, Mr. Peary, through his coöperators, attempted to discredit my veracity. An affidavit, which was bought, as I have evidence to prove, was made by Barrill to the effect that I had not climbed Mt. McKinley. The getting of this affidavit is placed at the door of Mr. Peary.
Do honest men, with honest intentions, buy perjured documents?
Do honest men, believing in themselves, besmirch their own honor by deliberate lying?
Dunkle and Loose came to me, offered to look over the observations in my Herald story, and—suddenly—to my amazement—offered a set of faked observations, manufactured at the instigation of someone. I refused the batch of faked papers, and turned the two nefarious conspirators out of my hotel.
A comparison of my Copenhagen report with the Dunkle perjured story, later printed in the New York Times, proves I used not one of their figures. Mr. R. J. McLouglin later proved that the hand which signed "Dunkle" also signed "Loose" to that lying document. It is, therefore, not only a perjury, but a forgery.
Recently, Professor J. H. Gore, a member of the National Geographic Society, and one of Peary's friends, acknowledged to Evelyn B. Baldwin that he had in his possession the faked observations which were made by Dunkle and Loose.