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the suspicion of this aimless fuss being a political move to get home on the M.T. Company, into which, in common parlance, the United States Government has got its knife, I don’t pretend to understand why, though with the rest of the world I am aware of the fact.  Perhaps there may be an excellent and worthy reason for it; but I venture to suggest that to take advantage of so many pitiful corpses, is not pretty.  And the exploiting of the mere sensation on the other side is not pretty in its wealth of heartless inventions.  Neither is the welter of Marconi lies which has not been sent vibrating without some reason, for which it would be nauseous to inquire too closely.  And the calumnious, baseless, gratuitous, circumstantial lie charging poor Captain Smith with desertion of his post by means of suicide is the vilest and most ugly thing of all in this outburst of journalistic enterprise, without feeling, without honour, without decency.
    But all this has its moral.  And that other sinking which I have related here and to the memory of which a seaman turns with relief and thankfulness has its moral too.  Yes, material may fail, and men, too, may fail sometimes; but more often men, when they are given the chance, will prove themselves truer than steel, that wonderful thin steel from which the sides and the bulkheads of our modern sea-leviathans are made.
     

CERTAIN ASPECTS OF THE ADMIRABLE INQUIRY INTO THE LOSS OF THE TITANIC — 1912
     
    I have been taken to task by a friend of mine on the “other side” for my strictures on Senator Smith’s investigation into the loss of the Titanic , in the number of The English Review for May, 1912.  I will admit that the motives of the investigation may have been excellent, and probably were; my criticism bore mainly on matters of form and also on the point of efficiency.  In that respect I have nothing to retract.  The Senators of the Commission had absolutely no knowledge and no practice to guide them in the conduct of such an investigation; and this fact gave an air of unreality to their zealous exertions.  I think that even in the United States there is some regret that this zeal of theirs was not tempered by a large dose of wisdom.  It is fitting that people who rush with such ardour to the work of putting questions to men yet gasping from a narrow escape should have, I wouldn’t say a tincture of technical information, but enough knowledge of the subject to direct the trend of their inquiry.  The newspapers of two continents have noted the remarks of the President of the Senatorial Commission with comments which I will not reproduce here, having a scant respect for the “organs of public opinion,” as they fondly believe themselves to be.  The absolute value of their remarks was about as great as the value of the investigation they either mocked at or extolled.  To the United States Senate I did not intend to be disrespectful.  I have for that body, of which one hears mostly in connection with tariffs, as much reverence as the best of Americans.  To manifest more or less would be an impertinence in a stranger.  I have expressed myself with less reserve on our Board of Trade.  That was done under the influence of warm feelings.  We were all feeling warmly on the matter at that time.  But, at any rate, our Board of Trade Inquiry, conducted by an experienced President, discovered a very interesting fact on the very second day of its sitting: the fact that the water-tight doors in the bulkheads of that wonder of naval architecture could be opened down below by any irresponsible person.  Thus the famous closing apparatus on the bridge, paraded as a device of greater safety, with its attachments of warning bells, coloured lights, and all these pretty-pretties, was, in the case of this ship, little better than a technical farce.
    It is amusing, if anything connected with this stupid catastrophe can be amusing, to see the secretly crestfallen attitude of technicians.  They are the high priests of the modern cult of perfected material and of mechanical appliances, and would fain forbid the profane from inquiring into its mysteries.  We are the masters of progress, they say, and you should remain respectfully silent.  And they take refuge behind their mathematics.  I have the greatest regard for mathematics as an exercise of mind.  It is the only manner of thinking which approaches the Divine.  But mere calculations, of which these men make so