(Ed.) In personal letters Balch further says, "I have tried to look at it as if this were the year 2013, and all of us in heaven.... It is only a question of time till Dr. Cook is recognized as the discoverer of the North Pole."
FOR A NATIONAL INVESTIGATION
A REQUEST
By Dr. Frederick A. Cook
For three years I have sought in various ways to bring about a National investigation of the relative merits of the Polar Attainment and the unjust propaganda of distrust which followed. Such an investigation would do no harm if the original work and the later criticism has been done in good faith. Why has it been refused? To take the ground that it is a private matter and that the Government has taken no official part in the Polar race is to assume a false position. The injustice of this evasive policy is brought out in my telegram to former President Taft—and again in my letter to President Wilson. To compel such an investigation and to appoint Arctic explorers as National experts has been my main mission on the platform. Much against my will I have been forced to adopt the usual political tactics of getting to the voters to force action by Congress and the official circles of Washington.
When in 1911 the bill was introduced in Congress to retire Peary as a Rear Admiral with a pension, I supposed that this would automatically bring about a thorough scientific examination of the merits of the rival Polar claims. And such an investigation I then believed would surely bring about the only reward I have ever claimed—The appreciation of my fellow countrymen. It was however, as I learned later, a bold Pro-Peary movement fostered by lobbyists whose conscience was eased by drippings from the Hubbard-Bridgeman Arctic Trust, but I still believed that the dictates of National prestige were such that the usual white-washing and rail-roading process could not be adopted in a question of such International importance. I did not begrudge Mr. Peary a pension if honest methods were pursued to adjust the bitterly fought contention in the eyes of the world. My friends made no protest in Congress. As matters progressed, however, I saw that such men as Prof. Willis Moore and others of his kind—men I had previously trusted as honest, really proved themselves, double-faced, political back-scratchers. Then I changed my tactics. When one's honor is bartered by thieves under the guise of friends—and when these thieves are part of a government from which justice is expected—Then one is bound to uncover the leprous spots of one's accusers. I am glad to note that Prof. Moore, the President of the National Geographic Society, has since been exposed as being too crooked to fit into a berth of the present administration. There are others whose long fingers have been in the Polar-pie who will also meet their fate as time exposes their flat-heads.
To call a halt on this National Humbug where only official chair-warmers and political crooks served as experts, I sent the following telegram to former President Taft:
COPY OF TELEGRAM SENT TO FORMER PRESIDENT TAFT
Omaha, Neb., March 4, 1911