guilty than others in this matter, and 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