2 THE NORTH POLE 



one of my greatest unalloyed pleasures is to know 

 that their confidence, subjected as it was to many 

 trials, was not misplaced, that their trust, their belief 

 in me and in the mission to which the best years of 

 my life have been given, have been abundantly jus- 

 tified. 



But while it is true that so far as plan and method 

 are concerned the discovery of the North Pole may 

 fairly be likened to a game of chess, there is, of course, 

 this obvious difference: in chess, brains are matched 

 against brains. In the quest of the Pole it was a 

 struggle of human brains and persistence against 

 the blind, brute forces of the elements of primeval 

 matter, acting often under laws and impulses almost 

 unknown or but little understood by us, and thus 

 many times seemingly capricious, freaky, not to be 

 foretold with any degree of certainty. For this reason, 

 while it was possible to plan, before the hour of sailing 

 from New York, the principal moves of the attack 

 upon the frozen North, it was not possible to antici- 

 pate all of the moves of the adversary. Had this been 

 possible, my expedition of 1905-1906, which estab- 

 lished the then "farthest north" record of 87° 6', 

 would have reached the Pole. But everybody familiar 

 with the records of that expedition knows that its 

 complete success was frustrated by one of those unfore- 

 seen moves of our great adversary — in that a season 

 of unusually violent and continued winds disrupted the 

 polar pack, separating me from my supporting parties, 

 with insufficient supplies, so that, when almost within 

 striking distance of the goal, it was necessary to turn 

 back because of the imminent peril of starvation. 



