DR. COOK.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XXXII, Issue 814, 19 February 1910, Page 2

DR. COOK.

The New York correspondent of the London Daily Telegraph writes of the discrediting of Dr Cook : There is a general anxiety to know what was his object in putting forward his claim to have discovered the Pole. Some Americans still adhere to the theory of delusions, but the more favoured theory now is that from the beginning he was actuated by the sordid purpose of making his fortune, and he has made it. Receiving ,£5,000 from one newspaper alone, and ,£IB,OOO for his lectures, the venture netted him, after expenses were paid, over ,£20,000. He would have been richer but for the fact that as the falsity of his story became established the public ceased to attend his lectures, and the receipts fell to vanishing point. Mr John Bradley, the New York sporting man who backed Dr Cook’s expedition and defended him to the last, now admits that he has been fooled, “but,” he continued gaily, “ the best of us get fooled once in a while. . . . Cook is a

peculiar man ; he never told me anything. Now we’ve got to admit he fooled us. There is not any sense in howling about it or attacking Dr Cook. I’m going to be a good sport and take my medicine.”