11 AUGUST 1923, Page 3

Readers of M. Vilhjalmur Stefansson's recent articles in the Spectator

will be greatly interested in the attempt to relieve Mr. Crawford and the three other white men who for more than two years have been keeping pos- session of Wrangell Island in the name of Great Britain. Mr. Stefansson, holding firmly to his doctrine that the inhospitality of the Arctic regions has been greatly exaggerated, and that these regions are in fact com- paratively friendly to human life, has little doubt that the white men on Wrangell Island, unless they have experienced some bad luck, are alive and thriving. He himself, with his knowledge of Nature and thanks to his study of animal life, lived safely in the Polar regions where previous explorers had died of starvation.