Читать книгу Beyond Adventure - Roy Chapman Andrews - Страница 7

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After four decades it is interesting to analyze the reasons for this extraordinary public attitude. They are not obscure. During three hundred years the North Pole had been the greatest prize for Arctic explorers. The race was keen among many hardy men of many nations. In America, Peary was the foremost contestant, a famous explorer whose expeditions had been largely publicized. Cook was virtually unknown. The idea of the "little man" slipping off quietly into the Arctic with no fanfare and accomplishing alone, in one season, what Peary had tried to do for two decades caught the popular fancy. Then Peary played right into Cook's hands with his unfortunate telegrams from Labrador. Some years later, at the Explorers Club in New York, while we were sitting before the fire, alone, Peary said to me, "Andrews, I'd give anything if I hadn't sent those telegrams! If I had kept quiet, Cook would have ruined himself anyway, for he had no records to prove his claim."

But Peary's action was only human. After twenty-three years of suffering and hardship in an honest effort to reach the Pole, to have a man who he knew was a fraud steal the glory was more than he could bear. Nevertheless, in the public eyes Peary was branded as a poor sportsman who could not tolerate being beaten at his own game by a better explorer. A good mass psychologist, Cook was quick to take advantage of Peary's mistake. He only replied: "There is glory enough for all." Posing as a modest, simple little man, somewhat bewildered by the world's acclaim and honors, he capitalized on them to the ultimate degree and with no delay. After an amazing initial welcome in Copenhagen, when king and commoner rushed to do him honor, he sailed for New York and a public reception cleverly staged by his supporters; then off on a whirlwind lecture tour across the continent. He spoke to crowds greater than in any but a political campaign, at high fees. The total receipts reached hundreds of thousands of dollars. Cook was a natural showman. He knew what the people wanted to hear and he gave it to them in large doses. His lectures dripped with thrills and harrowing stories of hardship and danger. They lapped it up. Cook was riding the crest of the wave. Dr. William Herbert Hobbs remarks, in his biography, Peary, that a popular vote conducted by a Pittsburgh newspaper as to who had reached the Pole gave Cook victory ten to one. The absurdity of such proceeding is evident, but no one cared that Cook had submitted no records of any kind to any geographical society, and that his claim rested entirely on his own word.