t route, and keep up their
schedule time; regardless of the risks indicated."

PROMPT REFORMS

The terrible sacrifice of the Titanic, however, is to have its fruit in
safety for the future. The official announcement is

{illust. caption = A diagrammatic map showing how...}

made by the International Mercantile Marine that all its ships will be
equipped with sufficient life-boats and rafts for every passenger and
every member of the crew, without regard to the regulations in this
country and England or Belgium. One of the German liners already had
this complement of life-boats, though the German marine as a whole is
sufficiently deficient at this point to induce the Reichstag to order an
investigation.

Prompt, immediate and gratifying reform marks this action of the
International Mercantile Marine. It is doubtless true that this
precaution ought to have been taken without waiting for a loss of life
such as makes all previous marine disasters seem trivial. But the public
itself has been inert. For thirty years, since Plimsoll's day, every
intelligent passenger knew that every British vessel was deficient in
life-boats, but neither public opinion nor the public press took
this matter up. There were no questions in Parliament and no measures
introduced in Congress. Even the legislation by which the United States
permitted English vessels reaching American ports to avoid the legal
requirements of American statute law (which requires a seat in the
life-boats for every passenger and every member of the crew) attracted
no public attention, and occasional references to the subject by those
better informed did nothing to awake action.

But this is past. Those who died bravely without complaint and with
sacrificing regard for others did not lose their lives in vain. The
safety of all travelers for all times to come under every civilized flag
is to be greater through their sac-rifice. Under modern conditions life
can be made as safe at sea as on the land. It is heartrending to stop
and think that thirty-two more life-boats, costing only about $16,000,
which could have been stowed away without being noticed on the broad
decks of the Titanic, would have saved every man, woman and child on
the steamer. There has never been so great a disaster in the history of
civilization due to the neglect of so small an expenditure.

It would be idle to think that this was due simply to parsimony. It was
really due to the false and v