No More Learning

Then Lenin said slowly: "Neither the American
Government nor any of the Allied Governments will
cooperate, even against the Germans, with the workmen's
and peasants' revolutionary government of Russia. I
shall now speak for the peace. It will be ratified. "14 And
the Congress adopted the onerous Treaty of Brest-Litovsk
by a vote of 724 to 276, with 204 abstaining.
Thus it was that back in 1917 and 1918 hate and
fear, and the misunderstandings engendered by hate and
fear, held back America and the Allies from any reason-
able collaboration with Soviet Russia, and left the Soviets
with no practicable alternative except to submit to the
imperialist peace imposed by an arrogant German gov-
ernment flushed with victory. We cannot resist the con-
clusion that the Allies and associated powers, rather than
take a single step which might strengthen the Socialist
Republic, preferred to see the German militarists weaken
it, tap the resources of the immense territories they had
annexed and grow stronger against the Allies themselves.
All this has a familiar ring in view of the Franco-
British attitude toward Soviet Russia and Germany some
two decades later. In 1938 and 1939 the French and Brit-
ish Governments, with plenty of encouragement from
America, refused to take effective action on behalf of a
genuine peace front with the U. S. S. R. against Nazi ag-
gression. On the contrary, by their vacillations and sur-
render to Hitler at Munich they egged on Germany once
more against Russia, forcing the Soviet Government in
self-defense to come to an agreement with imperialist
Germany. So it was that Foreign Minister Molotov, in
explaining the Soviet-German Non-Aggression Pact of
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? THE HISTORICAL BACKGROUND
1939, stated that the French and British Governments
were afraid that "the conclusion of a real pact of mutual
assistance with the U. S. S. R. may strengthen our country,
the Soviet Union, which, it appears, does not answer their
purpose. It must be admitted that these fears outweighed
other considerations. "16 In this situation at least, history
repeated itself with a vengeance.
Returning to the eventful year of 1918, we find that
within a month after the Brest-Litovsk Treaty the Allies
commenced their armed intervention against Soviet
Russia and their close military collaboration with the
White counter-revolutionaries. Soon French, English and
American expeditionary forces landed at Murmansk and
Archangel in the Arctic region; the Japanese attacked at
Vladivostok in the Far East, and later American troops
pushed in from the same port; a British army invaded
the Caucasus and occupied Baku and Batumi.
The public pretext for all this was to re-establish the
Eastern Front. The real reason was to overthrow the
Soviet Government, "to throttle in its infancy the noi-
some beast of Bolshevism," as one British general frankly
put it. That this was the fundamental purpose of the
intervention was proved up to the hilt by the fact that
after the German surrender on November 11, 1918, the
Allied invasion and blockade, far from ceasing, was in-
tensified. What President Wilson had called "the acid
test" of good will and sympathy on the part of Russia's
sister nations had become for the Russians very acid
indeed.
The Allied statements at the Paris Peace Conference
did nothing to halt the undeclared world war against
Soviet Russia; nor did they arrive at any workable solu-
tion of the Russian problem. Paris was swarming with
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? SOVIET CIVILIZATION
Tsarist refugees who were certain that they would soon
return to their native land and resume the life of leisure
to which they had been accustomed. Emigre liberals also
spread their own particular brand of confusion, and
among them the likable ex-premier, Kerensky. Here
again my father entered the picture briefly. Early in
1919 the Big Four (Clemenceau, Lloyd George, Orlando
and Wilson) delegated him and Felix Frankfurter, now
a Justice of the United States Supreme Court, to meet
with Kerensky and find out what he thought ought to be
done about Russia. Mr. Lamont and Mr. Frankfurter
had dinner with Kerensky one night in a private room
at a Paris restaurant and talked with him till two o'clock
in the morning. Kerensky, true to his oratorical nature,
kept making stump speeches all evening, rising from the
table and striding around the room in his excitement.
But he never came down from the clouds to concrete
formulations and definite plans, and his hazy ideas
seemed to keep floating away into thin air.
In Russia itself the Communist regime continued to
fight for its life. But in Siberia General William S.
Graves, in command of the 7,000 troops of the American
expeditionary force, refused to attack the Soviets and in-
stead tried to counter Japanese infiltration into the
Russian Far East and to forestall any Japanese move to
annex Russian territory. The Americans were also help-
ful to Soviet Russia in the extensive famine relief which
they supplied from 1921 to 1923. The head of the Amer-
ican Relief Administration was Herbert Hoover, then
U. S. Secretary of Commerce. He collected approxi-
mately $66,000,000 for Russian relief and shipped almost
a million tons of food to the U. S. S. R. American altruism
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? THE HISTORICAL BACKGROUHD
and humanitarianism saved millions of Russians from
starvation during this terrible emergency.
At the same time the American Government came
out for the territorial integrity of Russia and declined
to enter into various imperialist schemes for the dismem-
berment of the country. In 1920 Secretary of State Bain-
bridge Colby officially stated that the United States
"would regard with satisfaction a declaration by the
Allied and associated powers that the territorial integrity
and true boundaries of Russia shall be respected. These
boundaries should include the whole of the former
Russian Empire, with the exception of Finland proper,
ethnic Poland, and such territory as may by agreement
form a part of the Armenian state. "16 The American
Government reluctantly recognized the independence
of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania only in 1922 and with
the expectation that the Baltic States would return to
Russia when the Soviet Republic collapsed.
Aside from the antagonistic and often hysterical atti-
tude of America toward the Soviet Union in the early
years of the Revolution, direct friction between the two
Governments and peoples arose over the matter of debts.
The United States Government demanded that the $187,-
000,000 loaned to the Provisional Government should
be paid back by the Soviet regime. Also there were the
claims, totaling about $400,000,000, of private American
citizens who had held property in Tsarist Russia or who
had bought Tsarist bonds. They recovered hardly a
penny. As for the Provisional Government's obligation,
the Soviet Republic took the position that while it had
the right to repudiate the debts of its predecessors, it
would be glad to discuss the matter with the American
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? SOVIET CIVILIZATION
Government and try to reach a satisfactory settlement.
The Soviets pointed out that much of the loan had
been spent after they came into power for anti-Soviet
propaganda and for military supplies which were actual-
ly used against them. Furthermore, the Soviet Union had
large counter-claims to advance because of damages in-
flicted by American soldiers in northern Russia and
Siberia. A further complication arose from the fact that
in the Treaty of Rapallo, signed in 1922, Germany re-
nounced all its financial claims on Soviet Russia, provided
that the Russians did not "satisfy similar claims made
by any third state. " The Soviet proposal was to work off
the debt to the United States obliquely by paying excess
interest rates on a loan from America. But this plan
never got very far.
Long before diplomatic ties were established between
the U. S. A. and the U. S. S. R. a considerable volume of
trade developed between the two nations which was of
much economic assistance to the Soviets and helped keep
American workers employed during some of the worst
years of the Great Depression. The peak was reached in
1930 when exports from the United States to Soviet
Russia amounted to $114,000,000 and imports from
Russia to $24,000,000. The year 1931 was almost equally
good for American-Soviet trade. American firms such
as General Electric, the Ford Motor Company and Inter-
national Harvester carried through technical aid con-
tracts with the Soviet regime which were of immense
importance for its industrialization program and height-
ened the admiration the Russians have always had for
American technique. An outstanding American engi-
neer, the late Colonel Hugh Cooper, was decorated by
the Soviet Government for his part in the construction
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? THE HISTORICAL BACKGROUND
of the great Dnieper River Dam in the Ukraine.
Despite America's continued failure to recognize the
Soviet Government, the Soviets welcomed American
visitors in their country. And up till the outbreak of
World War II thousands of American students, intel-
lectuals and tourists in general went to the U. S. S. R. to
observe conditions. Many eminent American writers
and journalists produced articles or books on the pro-
gress of Soviet Russia which contributed to an under-
standing of that country in the United States. But the
anti-Soviet chorus always remained vociferous and swayed
large sectors of American public opinion.
Shortly after the Communist Revolution individuals
and groups in the United States started to call for Ameri-
can recognition of the Soviet Republic. Later Senator
William E. Borah of Idaho and Senator Joseph I. France
of Maryland labored ceaselessly towards the same end.
However, as long as the Republican Party remained in
power, under Presidents Harding, Coolidge and Hoover,
there was little chance for a far-reaching shift in the
official American attitude toward the Soviets. When in
1932 the people of the United States elected as President
Franklin D. Roosevelt, a man of profound vision in
international as well as domestic affairs, it soon became
evident that drastic changes in foreign policy were in the
offing. The coming of Hitler to power early in 1933 and
the continued aggression of the Japanese in China were
also significant factors in moderating American policy
toward the U. S. S. R. and in the general climate of opinion.
In the spring of 1933 a group of private citizens set
up a special Committee on Russian-American Relations,
with Curtis Bok of Philadelphia as Chairman and includ-
ing Thomas S. Gates, President of the University of
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? SOVIET CIVILIZATION
Pennsylvania, Thomas W. Lamont, Roland S. Morris,
former Ambassador to Japan, and Roscoe W. Pound,
Dean of the Harvard Law School. A few months later
this Committee issued a report thoroughly reviewing
Russian-American relations and calmly presenting the
factual material essential to "the interested non-expert
citizen in making up his mind" about recognition. Since
the report was objective and got away from the atmo-
sphere of heated controversy, its effect was unquestionably
to further the campaign for recognition.
In October, 1933, President Roosevelt wrote Soviet
President Kalinin a letter stressing "the desirability of an
effort to end the present abnormal relations between the
one hundred and twenty-five million people of the United
States and the one hundred and sixty million people of
Russia"; and saying that he would be "glad to receive
any representatives you may designate to explore with
me personally all questions outstanding between our two
countries. " The Soviet authorities promptly accepted
this invitation and sent as their representative to Wash-
ington Foreign Secretary Litvinov. After private confer-
ences lasting over a week the United States, on November
16, 1933, formally recognized the Soviet Government
on the basis of notes exchanged by Litvinov and Roose-
velt covering the principal points at issue between the
two Governments. Thus, sixteen years after the Soviet
Republic came into existence the American Government
recognized it, whereas Tsarist Russia had taken double
that time to recognize the American Republic. Paradox-
ically, now America instead of Russia was the great con-
servative power and Russia instead of America the great
radical power.
Alexander Troyanovsky became the first Soviet Am-
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? THE HISTORICAL BACKGROUND
bassador to the United States and William C. Bullitt the
first American Ambassador to the Soviet Union. Mr.
Bullitt, who had headed the abortive American Mission
to Soviet Russia in 1919, was at first fairly friendly
towards the Russians. After he went to Moscow as am-
bassador he soon grew disillusioned with the U. S. S. R.
and later developed into one of the most bitter of anti-
Soviet fanatics. In the summer of 1935 the American
Government through Mr. Bullitt protested to the Soviet
Government over speeches made by American Commun-
ists at the Seventh World Congress of the Third Inter-
national or Comintern. Ambassador Bullitt stated that
this constituted a violation of the recognition agreement,
which pledged non-interference in each other's domestic
affairs and which promised that neither the U. S. A. nor
the U. S. S. R. would permit the formation on its soil of
any group aiming to use force in changing the political
or economic system of the other country.
The Soviet Government replied that it had no res-
ponsibility for the actions of the Comintern. It argued
that freedom of speech and assembly for workers' organi-
zations implied the right of the Third International to
meet in the Soviet Union. "It is therefore quite incom-
prehensible," the Soviet note went on to say, "why the
Soviet Government alone should place obstacles in the
way of the activities of Communist organizations, when
even the conservative bourgeois governments of various
countries are compelled to tolerate the existence of legal
Communist Parties. " This whole issue became rather
academic a few years later when, in 1940, the Communist
Party of the United States withdrew from the Comintern.
In 1943 the Communist International itself dissolved.
In 1936 Joseph E. Davies succeeded Mr. Bullitt as
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? SOVIET CIVILIZATION
Ambassador to Moscow and served until the middle of
1938. Making a genuine attempt to understand Soviet
affairs and the Soviet point of view, Mr. Davies did much
to improve relations between the United States and Soviet
Russia. But following the Soviet-German Non-Aggres-
sion Pact of August, 1939, and the Soviet invasion of Fin-
land in November, those relations sank to a new low.
In December, President Roosevelt imposed a "moral
embargo" on the sale of certain war materials to the
U. S. S. R. This embargo was repealed in January of 1941;
and American-Soviet relations took a turn for the better
as rumors filtered through of German-Soviet friction and
a probable Nazi attack on the Soviet Union.
When that attack finally came in June the whole
American-Soviet picture rapidly altered. In November
President Roosevelt publicly stated, "I have found that
the defense of the U. S. S. R. is vital to the defense of the
United States," and thereby brought Soviet Russia with-
in the provisions of the Lend-Lease Act. The American
Government immediately set up a billion-dollar credit
for the Soviets, and by the end of the war had extended
a total of $11,000,000,000 in Lend-Lease to the Soviet
Union. Cooperation and good feeling between the
United States and Soviet Russia reached a high point
from the autumn of 1941 to the conclusion of the Second
World War. At both the Teheran Conference in 1943
and the Yalta Conference in 1945 President Roosevelt
and Premier Stalin, together with Prime Minister Chur-
chill, personally talked through and came to an accord
on various problems of military collaboration and post-
war international affairs. During this period the only
consequential rift in the lute was the long controversy
over the opening of an Anglo-American Second Front in
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? THE HISTORICAL BACKOROUHD
France. The Russians, carrying the brunt of Hitler's
land assault, hoped for the Second Front in 1942, ex-
pected it in 1943 and were bitterly disappointed that it
did not take place until 1944. When, however, the
American and British forces landed in Normandy and
swept the Germans back, the Soviet reaction was enthusi-
astic. And Generalissimo Stalin stated: "The history of
war knows no similar undertaking as regards breadth of
design, vastness of scale and high skill in execution. "17
The Second Front controversy brought out the im-
portant fact that Winston Churchill much preferred that
the Anglo-American assault on the Nazis should go
through the general region of the Balkans, "the soft un-
derbelly of Europe," as he fondly kept calling it. A
prime reason for this plan was Mr. Churchill's devout
wish to forestall and counteract Soviet power and influ-
ence in southeastern Europe. And there seems little
doubt that the British Prime Minister was influential in
delaying the landings in France and that he remained
lukewarm to the end concerning this operation. Had it
not been for the firmness of Mr. Roosevelt, General
Eisenhower and other highly placed Americans, Chur-
chill's alternative might well have been adopted.
In April, 1945, as Hitler's armies were staggering to
final surrender, American and Soviet delegates again
worked closely together at the San Francisco Conference
which established the United Nations. On April 12
American-Soviet understanding and cooperation received
a heavy blow when President Roosevelt died. In July the
Potsdam Conference met, with President Truman as the
top representative of the United States and Premier
Stalin as the top representative of the Soviet Union.
This Conference reached a number of basic agreements
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? SOVIET CIVILIZATION
about the future of defeated Germany and of Eastern
Europe.
At the Yalta Conference Premier Stalin had promised
Mr. Roosevelt that the U. S. S. R. would come into the
war against Japan three months after the surrender of
Germany. True to its pledged word, the Soviet Union
declared war on the Japanese Government August 8,
precisely on schedule, and immediately attacked the large
Japanese forces, numbering more than 600,000, in Man-
churia. The Soviet offensive was forging swiftly ahead
when, on August 14, Japan surrendered unconditionally
to the Allies. The entrance of Soviet Russia into the Far
Eastern conflict, combined with the dropping of atomic
bombs by American fliers on Hiroshima and Nagasaki
on August 6 and August 9 respectively, finally convinced
the Japanese that further struggle was hopeless.
Summarizing this brief historical survey, we can assert
that the United States and Russia, despite wide diver-
gences in their economic and political systems both be-
fore and after the Revolution of 1917, have had far-reach-
ing common interests in the international sphere and
have been able to cooperate with much mutual benefit
during periods of world peace as well as world war. For
almost 100 years they have had no territorial rivalries.
And in the sphere of trade the two countries have all
along nicely supplemented each other rather than com-
peting on the world market. This is still true. What
Soviet Russia wishes primarily to sell America are raw
materials, which are exactly what America wants; what
America wishes to sell the U. S. S. R. are machinery, ma-
chine tools and manufactured goods, which are precisely
what the Russians want.
In essence both the American and Russian peoples
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? THE HISTORICAL BACKGROUHD
are peace-loving and stand together for the permanent
abolition of international conflict. The two Governments,
the American and Soviet, have for many years favored
the same method for preventing war, that is, the estab-
lishment of collective security through a world organiza-
tion such as the United Nations consisting of all states
wishing to band together in the cause of international
amity. This was the identical idea which President
Wilson had when in 1919 he drafted the League of Na-
tions Covenant, later unhappily turned down by the
United States Senate.
The League was handicapped from the start by the
absence of the United States and Soviet Russia as found-
ing members. Both countries, however, have been from
the outset members of the United Nations. And this, at
least, is a gain as compared with the situation following
the First World War.
3. American Names on Soviet Maps
An intriguing sidelight on American-Russian rela-
tions is the degree to which American explorers have
been interested in remote Russian territories and the
paradoxical consequences to which this has led. For con-
cerning the frigid far north of the U. S. S. R. , official and
detailed maps of the Soviet Arctic regions reveal strange
and astonishing things. Such maps show that the Soviet
Union, world pioneer in socialism, contains more than
a dozen places named after prominent citizens of capital-
ist America, including such pillars of the banking busi-
ness as J. Pierpont Morgan, the elder, founder of J. P.
Morgan & Co. , and Charles G. Dawes, Chicago financier
and Vice-President of the United States in the conser-
vative Republican Administration of Calvin Coolidge.
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? SOVIET CIVILIZATION
Most of these places are situated in Soviet Europe in
the eastern or central parts of polar Franz Josef Land,
a large, almost completely ice-covered archipelago of some
800 islands located far above the Arctic Circle and about
600 miles northeast of Murmansk. This was the Soviet
Arctic port which was so vital in receiving Lend-Lease
supplies from Britain and America during the Second
World War.
An Austrian explorer, Julius Payer, discovered this
group of islands in 1873 and named it after the long-
lived Emperor Franz Josef of Austria-Hungary. Payer
also named the northernmost island in the archipelago
Crown Prince Rudolf Land (simply Rudolf Island on
Soviet maps), after the Emperor's ill-fated only son;
while he. honored Count Wilczek, who financed his
expedition, by naming a large . island^in the northeast
Wilczek Land. In generaf the Soviet Government has
retained the names assigned by Payer and other non-
Russian explorers.
American polar explorers first came to Franz Josef
Land in 1898 and 1899 when an expedition headed by
Walter Wellman charted much of the eastern section.
Wellman, who subsequently tried to reach the North
Pole by airship, published a book in 1911 entitled The
Aerial Age. There he tells of his hair-raising adventures
and narrow escapes in Franz Josef Land and of his abor-
tive attempts to fly to the North Pole from Spitsbergen.
He also lists a number of prominent Americans who
assisted in financing his expedition to Franz Josef Land.
These included J. Pierpont Morgan, then at the
height of his career; William K. Vanderbilt, railway mag-
nate and grandson of Cornelius ("Commodore") Van-
derbilt; Helen M. Gould, daughter of the railroad capi-
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? THE HISTORICAL BACKGROUND
talist, Jay Gould, and later Mrs. Finley J. Shepard; Levi
Z. Leiter, Chicago dry goods merchant and in the early
days a partner of Marshall Field; William McKinley,
President of the United States; Cornelius N. Bliss, Sec-
retary of the Interior under McKinley; William C. Whit-
ney, Secretary of the Navy during President Cleveland's
first administration; and "other friends. " \
In the same book Wellman, writing of the expedi-
tion's activities in 1899, states: "Up to this time the east-
ward extent of the Franz Josef Land archipelago was un-
known and was a moot question among geographers.
Our party delimited the archipelago to the northeast,
discovering many new islands. One of them, of consider-
able area, beyond Wilczek Land, I named after Alexander
Graham Bell, then President of the Geographic Society.
Other islands, capes and straits v I named in honor of
friends who had helped me finance the expedition. " Bell
was of course the inventor of the telephone and the big
island named after him is called plain Graham Bell.
Morgan Strait lies directly south of Graham Bell
Island between it and Wilczek Land. There can be no
doubt that Wellman named this body of water after the
American financier, and the map of Franz Josef Land
in the 1929 Edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica gives
the fuller title of Pierpont Morgan Strait. This map also
includes Vanderbilt Sound and Whitney Island in the
same vicinity, but neither of these places is on our Soviet
reference map from the Large Soviet Encyclopedia. This
map, however, does show, off the southeast end of
Wilczek Land, Dawes Island, named after ex-Vice-Presi-
dent Dawes, who has confirmed the fact that he made a
financial contribution to the Wellman expedition.
Just south of Dawes Island is McNulta Island, prob-
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? SOVIET CIVILIZATIOH
ably named after John McNulta, an Illinois lawyer and
member of the House of Representatives toward the end
of the last century. Somewhat north of Dawes is Gould
Bay, obviously named after Helen M. Gould. At the
southeast tip of Graham Bell Island we find Cape Leiter,
named after Levi Z. Leiter; and at the central eastern
extremity of Graham Bell, Cape Olney, in all likelihood
named after Richard Olney, Secretary of State during
Cleveland's second term. Cape Olney is not shown on
the map, but is definitely marked on the official one in
the Large Soviet Atlas of the World.
Turning again to our main reference map, we dis-
cover in the south central section of the Franz Josef archi-
pelago Bliss Island, evidently named after Cornelius N.
Bliss; and near it to the east Alger Island, not named
after the popular American author of juveniles, but after
Senator Russell A. Alger of Michigan, Secretary of War
in McKinley's first administration.
In 1901-02 another expedition from the United
States went to Franz Josef Land under the command of
Evelyn Briggs Baldwin; while in 1903-05 the famous
Ziegler Polar Expedition spent three years in this region
under Anthony Fiala. Fiala named a large body of land
in the central portion Ziegler Island; an island to the
north of this he called Greely, after an American Arctic
explorer of that name, and one to the south Champ, after
Ziegler's secretary, who was very active in helping to
plan the expedition. In November of 1903 Fiala's
yacht America was crushed in the ice on the western side
of Rudolf Island. But his party had been able to land
most of its supplies and equipment, and built a sturdy
camp and an astronomical observatory at Teplitz Bay.
In 1944 I called on Mr. Fiala at his New York City
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? THE HISTORICAL BACKGROUND
office, which was a miniature museum of all sorts of Arctic
pictures, maps and mementos. Fiala told me that in 1934
the Soviet Arctic Institute in Leningrad wrote him that
Soviet explorers had recently found his library of about
seventy-five books that he had taken ashore to his wooden
hut on Rudolf Island and left behind in 1903. The Insti-
tute offered to send the books back to the United States
if Fiala would pay the transportation charges. Fiala did
not think this worth the trouble and instead presented
his books to the library of the Arctic Institute.
Noted explorers from England and Norway have also
visited Franz Josef Land, which explains why in the
western section of the archipelago there are such islands
as Alexandra Land, Prince George Land (simply George
Land on Soviet maps) and Nansen Island. Nansen
Island is named after the well-known Norwegian ex-
plorer, Fridtjof Nansen, who spent nine severe and ex-
citing months in Franz Josef Land from August, 1895,
to May, 1896.
Returning, finally, to the discoverer of Franz Josef
Land, Julius Payer, we learn from his book New Lands
within the Arctic Circle that he, too, named certain
places after Americans. These were Hall Island, a large
island south of Wilczek Land, and Hayes Island, a small
body of land northwest of Hall. Charles Francis Hall
and Dr. I. I. Hayes were both American Arctic explorers
who had won Payer's admiration for their records in
reaching northern latitudes in the neighborhood of
Greenland.
At the extreme southeast of the archipelago Payer
also named a tiny island, a mere dot on the Soviet map,
Lamont Island, important for Payer and his party be-
cause it was the last bit of land on which they were able
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? SOVIET CIVILIZATION
to camp during their retreat south after abandoning their
ship in the ice. This island was named after a noted
Scotch Arctic explorer of the nineteenth century, Sir
James Lamont. Sir James was no relation to the author,
though his ancestry like my own went back to the Clan
Lamont of Scotland.
Much smaller than Franz Josef Land and situated in
the Siberian Arctic of Soviet Asia is another group of
Soviet islands with American names. Most prominent
of these on Soviet maps is Bennett Island, named after
the eminent American newspaper publisher, James Gor-
don Bennett, the younger. For almost half a century
Bennett was owner of the New York Herald, which
merged with the New York Tribune in 1924 to form the
present Herald Tribune. Near Soviet Russia's Bennett
Island are two other small islands named after members
of the publisher's family.
Early in his life James Gordon Bennett developed a
deep interest in exploration and it was he who in 1869, at
his own expense, sent Stanley to Africa on his successful
search for Livingstone. In 1879, Bennett gave his en-
thusiastic support and financial backing to George Wash-
ington De Long's expedition to reach the North Pole.
By special act of Congress the De Long expedition was
made a national undertaking under charge of the Secre-
tary of the Navy. In July, 1879, De Long set sail from
San Francisco in the steamer Jeannette, named after Ben-
nett's sister, and headed at once for Bering Strait.
During September the Jeannette passed Russia's He-
rald Island, about 200 miles west of Alaska and named
after a ship in the British Navy. From then on, however,
the expedition became involved in major difficulties.
The Jeannette got caught in the Arctic ice-pack and
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