Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 55.djvu/110

100 the commissions. I should greatly regret having any one understand that there was the slightest intimation of the existence of a "handsome retainer," or anything of the sort, in connection with any or all of the Bering Sea investigations.

As far as the American representatives on the first commission are concerned, it is no harm to say that the pecuniary residual was unfortunately affected by the wrong sign, and this was doubtless the case as well with Dr. Jordan and his colleagues.

As to the truth of the statement regarding the "scientific expert," no evidence need be offered here, for it is furnishdfurnished [sic] by every court in the land, and not a day passes that does not witness a struggle between "experts" who have nearly always started from the same premises, but whose conclusions are diametrically opposed to each other. What I do want to say is that this is quite consistent with the perfect honesty and good intent of the experts themselves. It is the result of the limitations to which the operations of the human intellect are still subjected, and it is a fact always to be reckoned with in matters of this kind. There should be no skepticism as to the honesty and frankness of Sir George Baden-Powell and Dr. George M. Dawson in assuming an attitude so opposed to that of the American commissioners in 1892.

Mr. Clark regards my article of 1897 as a "prediction of failure for the new commission," an assumption quite unjustified and unsustained by the article itself, in which the fullest recognition is shown of the great value of the work of Dr. Jordan and his colleagues. Indeed, the article was purposely prepared and published before the meeting of the second commission, that it might not seem to be in any way a criticism upon its work. Now that both commissions have made public their findings, the whole matter is easily accessible, but Mr. Clark is hardly just to the first commissioners on either side, by the slight reference he makes to their separate reports to their respective governments. A more careful study of both might have led to some modification of his views, even concerning the partition of authorship which he has ventured to make. It is no mean compliment, however, to find him admitting, in regard to the report of the American commissioners, that "not a single statement of fact in it has proved fallacious, and the more exhaustive investigations of 1896 and 1897 corroborate its conclusions in every particular." And this admission lies adjacent to his assertion that "the investigations conducted by the two commissions [of 1891] were, from a scientific point of view, of the nature of a farce." The fact is, Mr. Clark seems to have strangely misunderstood the character of the investigations which were contemplated and desired. The natural history of the fur seal was not the question submitted to