I 7 4 EUROPE GIVES HONOR TO DR. COOK 



He had been received by the King, feted at the American Legation, 

 and treated with the homage given to a warrior returning from his 

 conquests, and now there was something pathetic in the fact that 

 he was called on to prove his claim as the greatest explorer the 

 world has ever known. 



"I could almost fancy the shades of Cabot, Franklin and 

 Andree standing with folded arms behind the little man as he spoke 

 quietly in his curious American drawl tinged by years in the Arctic 

 with a Scandinavian accent. We seemed to be making history, and 

 behind the greatness of it there was something grotesque. 



"Here was a man whose greatness will live as long as the world 

 lasts arraigned like a prisoner in the dock, charged with discovering 

 the North Pole. For an hour he was submitted to a searching cross- 

 examination and sat there answering questions with a map of the 

 Arctic regions spread before him, tracing the adventurous journey 

 with his forefinger from his last glimpse of land to the great ice 

 desert. 



"He smiled indulgently now and again as if he pitied our 

 incredulity, but never once did he decline to answer questions, and 

 they were put to him baldly and directly. It was a trial of veracity. 

 Dr. Cook, with his back to the wall, was fighting to convince a world 

 of unbelievers. The picture will ever remain with me out of to-day's 

 record of a little, sturdy man with dreamy gray blue eyes that 

 seemed to vision the desolate days, what had been a trim, fair 

 mustache stubbling his upper lip and a firm, strong chin, now shorn 

 of beard. 



"A very ordinary catalogue of a man's features, but that is 

 the most remarkable thing about him. He is just a man of the type 

 you see every day. If there is anything persistent in his individu- 

 ality it is those haunting eyes, the eyes of a man who has looked for 

 an empty horizon. He turned this way and that, replying like a 

 witness giving evidence before a royal commission. 



"He belongs to the supermen of to-day, the Shackletons, the 



