The DAILY NEWS. TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 14. AS UNSEEMLY WRANGLE.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LII, Issue 189, 14 September 1909, Page 2

The DAILY NEWS. TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 14. AS UNSEEMLY WRANGLE.

The unseemly wrangle into which United States' partisans, over practically the entire continent, have been

thrown as to the truth or otherwise of Dr. Cook's and Lieut. Peary's claims to have reached the North Pole is strangely at variance with the promptness with which the word of a British uxpiorer would have been received by his own people and the world at larg.:. Probably sensatiou-mongering hug been carried to such a pass in the land o : big things that unbelief is becoming naturally a trail of the national character. The reputations of both Lieut. Peary and Dr. Cook prior to their I latest dash for the Pole were such a* | to give them a foremost place in the 1 ranks of explorers, but it must be admitted that when each alleges that the other is a fraud, the ordinary observer can scarcely he expected to believe either until the fullest details have been examined by experts. The world at large will not now accept, pending tiie arrival of the proofs of the accomplishments of the feat, the bald claim of either, although had it not been for the i apparently insane jealousy and rivalry I of the explorers partisans, and the scathing condemnation of one of the explorers by the other, each would have been acclaimed from the outset, as we hope events may yet prove they deserve 10 be. As matters now stand the honor of two of America's foremost figures is at stake. Sot oifly have their latest alleged achievements been questioned, but the genuineness of previous feats of discovery, which have been recorded in the .annals of uotable achievements have been seriously questioned. For the honor of America it is to be hoped 1 that no such besmirchment of the • «t-: tionni hi nor will ever be substantiated; nor do wi» think it will. Meantime, however, we can afl'ord to quietly await the consideration of the evidence of those qualified to weigh its value. Whether or not the Pole has been actually located is now, however, a matter of minor consideration compared with the clearing of the reputations -of the explorers concerned.