Читать книгу Beyond Adventure - Roy Chapman Andrews - Страница 6

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These cables heralded the greatest and most enduring hoax ever perpetrated on the world by one man. It saddened the life of a heroic American, probably prevented the Stars and Stripes from flying first at the South Pole—by making impossible an expedition planned by Peary with Captain Bartlett in command—and made "debunking" of explorers a favorite pastime for a generation. The Cook-Peary controversy was the most bitter and virulent non-political argument ever known in America. It developed into a veritable orgy of public and private wrangling that reached the bounds of hysteria.

The most influential newspapers in the land sided either with Cook or Peary as definitely as in any political campaign. The question was argued in country stores, in city clubs, in the halls of Congress and in private homes. It caused divorces, broken friendships and disruption of families. And recently, forty-three years after the two men came out of the Arctic, the controversy has been revived by the posthumous publication of a book by Frederick A. Cook, Return from the Pole.

It is incredible how the thing lasts. Tempers still flare at the mere mention of Cook vs. Peary. Only a short time ago, while I was speaking at a dinner given to the former presidents of the Explorers Club in New York City, a guest leaped to his feet and denounced me in violent language for "defaming" Cook's character—and this after Cook, as the result of an oil scandal, had served a term in Leavenworth penitentiary for using the mails to defraud investors.

When Cook's claim was discredited by every reputable geographic society at home and abroad, it seemed only to add fuel to the blazing fire. The newspapers that espoused Cook either would not publish such news at all, or tucked it in an obscure corner inside the least-read portion. The populace knew little about what sort of records an explorer was supposed to keep and cared less. They had taken their position and to hell with the facts. The controversy had reached the point of unreasoning mass hysteria.