The Birmingham age-herald., 1915-09-20

from tne knoxvflle Sentlnel. A N editorial paragraph in the "A Jacksonville Times Union. one A of the kind more pert than pointed, says:
 "Peary says he is willing to take &C., tive service in the navy again. But why say again?"
 The manner in which a large portion of the American public regards Peary | Is an interesting psychical study, and while 1t has a humorous phase it Is a very grim sort of humor. and to Peary himself must seem somewhat of & tragedy.
 If he Is good philosopher he can well laugh at the contretemps, the queer combination of odd circumstances that has robbed him of the deserved place in the esteem of many of his
 contemporaries. with the assurance
 that his fame Is secure with future
 generations, and that 1t will live with
 names like Columbus, Magellan. vasco da Gamma and others who, by daring
 and arduous emprise added to mans
 knowledge of the earth we live upon.
 Peary has received due recognition from the government and from Con-
 gross, and the scientific world has been
 lavish in bestowing it's honors, but this
 underourrent of popular depreciation.
 so wholly unjust, but so often mani
 fested. must necessarily be to him a
 source of disappointment and an noyance.
 Peary did good service in the navy of a practical and important sort. Had he never made the last voyage, on which he reached the pole, or had he never made any claim to that achieve ment there would be still enough of excellent work to his credit to mark him as one of the most useful men of his time and fix for him a secure place in the list of explorers. He added more to the knowledge of the polar regions than any man among the many who had engaged in such exploits and won high encomium for their undertaking. The fact that Peary proved Green land to be an island would alone have secured his regulations as an explorer.
 That he did in 1891. and 1t brought him the thanks and the medals of the Geographical Society of the United States and those of numerous foreign countries
 He discovered and named the large islands north of Greenland. and made the first complete surveys of the re- zion ever given the world. He reached and brought back to the United States the famous Cape York
 meteorites. that had been reported by Esquimo, but had never been seen by
 white men, His contributions to science
 had in fact been many and valuable
 long before he discovered the pole
 In his early life Peary was employed
 by the government to make survey of the proposed Nicaraguan ship canal.
 which he did with commendable thor
 oughness
 Peary was never regarded in any
 light other than that of a high class
 man. and was never spoken of with dis
 respect until he had actually accom-
 plished the difficult feat which others
 through several centuries had strug-
 gled to attain. and in which all ex- cept him had failed That 1t should have brought him any thing but approval and applause is
 most remarkable, and that it actually brought him a large degree of unpop- ularity and made him the subject of ribald jests. like that quoted at the be- ginning of this article. can be explained only on psychical grounds. It was one of those peculiar perversions of the public mind and popular affection for
 which there can be no logical account ing.
 Peary's former voyages to the north before he reached the pole had been productive of such results as to give him high standing. He stood with men like Nansen, the Swede. who held for some years the record of "farthest north" and he did more in making plain
 the conditions of the polar regions on the American side of the continent, the Greenland region, than all of his pred ecessors who had become famous in
 such difficult endeavor.
 | It was confidently 7 predicted on;
 Peary's last voyage that he would
 reach the north pole, and the world
 was waiting with expectancy of that important announcement on his return.
 Just at that time there came strange
 tale of lone traveller on Danish
 ship, one Doctor Frederick Cook, other wise Koch, who claimed that he had
 discovered the north pole. It would
 be tedious to rehearse the story. Like 1 the Yelled Prophet of Korassan. Gag ,liostro. and many other impostors, he
 had for time large following. and
 there arose a great controversy as to the truth of his story His claim lacked
 either reason or evidence to support 1t, ! and the inevitable callopse came as soon as any scientific investigation was
 made.
 l Actual proof was afterwards fur nished of barefaced fraud and actual lfalsehood in his previous claim that he had climbed Mount Mckinley.
 l But what did his infatuated followers
 do? Why they turned their ire on Peary. who returned shortly afterwards
 with substantiai evidence that his last