the emigrant trade alone, there would have been
no such exaggeration of mere size), you decorate it in the style of the
Pharaohs or in the Louis Quinze style--I don't know which--and to please
the aforesaid fatuous handful of individuals, who have more money than
they know what to do with, and to the applause of two continents, you
launch that mass with two thousand people on board at twenty-one knots
across the sea--a perfect exhibition of the modern blind trust in mere
material and appliances. And then this happens. General uproar. The
blind trust in material and appliances has received a terrible shock. I
will say nothing of the credulity which accepts any statement which
specialists, technicians and office-people are pleased to make, whether
for purposes of gain or glory. You stand there astonished and hurt in
your profoundest sensibilities. But what else under the circumstances
could you expect?

For my part I could much sooner believe in an unsinkable ship of 3,000
tons than in one of 40,000 tons. It is one of those things that stand to
reason. You can't increase the thickness of scantling and plates
indefinitely. And the mere weight of this bigness is an added
disadvantage. In reading the reports, the first reflection which occurs
to one is that, if that luckless ship had been a couple of hundred feet
shorter, she would have probably gone clear of the danger. But then,
perhaps, she could not have had a swimming bath and a French cafe. That,
of course, is a serious consideration. I am well aware that those
responsible for her short and fatal existence ask us in desolate accents
to believe that if she had hit end on she would have survived. Which, by
a sort of coy implication, seems to mean that it was all the fault of the
officer of the watch (he is dead now) for trying to avoid the obstacle.
We shall have presently, in deference to commercial and industrial
interests, a new kind of seamanship. A very new and "progressive" kind.
If you see anything in the way, by no means try to avoid it; smash at it
full tilt. And then--and then only you shall see the triumph of
material, of clever contrivances, of the whole box of engineering tricks
in fact, and cover with glory a commercial concern of the most
unmitigated sort, a great Trust, and a great ship-building yard, justly
famed for the super-excellence of its material and workmanship.
Unsinkable! See? I told you she was unsinkable, if only handled in