ation"
and a bundle of statistics in hand, that: "There's no lesson to be
learned, and that there is nothing to be done!"
On an earlier day there was another witness before the Court of Inquiry.
A mighty official of the White Star Line. The impression of his
testimony which the Report gave is of an almost scornful impatience with
all this fuss and pother. Boats! Of course we have crowded our decks
with them in answer to this ignorant clamour. Mere lumber! How can we
handle so many boats with our davits? Your people don't know the
conditions of the problem. We have given these matters our best
consideration, and we have done what we thought reasonable. We have done
more than our duty. We are wise, and good, and impeccable. And whoever
says otherwise is either ignorant or wicked.
This is the gist of these scornful answers which disclose the psychology
of commercial undertakings. It is the same psychology which fifty or so
years ago, before Samuel Plimsoll uplifted his voice, sent overloaded
ships to sea. "Why shouldn't we cram in as much cargo as our ships will
hold? Look how few, how very few of them get lost, after all."
Men don't change. Not very much. And the only answer to be given to
this manager who came out, impatient and indignant, from behind the plate-
glass windows of his shop to be discovered by this inquiry, and to tell
us that he, they, the whole three million (or thirty million, for all I
know) capital Organisation for selling passages has considered the
problem of boats--the only answer to give him is: that this is not a
problem of boats at all. It is the problem of decent behaviour. If you
can't carry or handle so many boats, then don't cram quite so many people
on board. It is as simple as that--this problem of right feeling and
right conduct, the real nature of which seems beyond the comprehension of
ticket-providers. Don't sell so many tickets, my virtuous dignitary.
After all, men and women (unless considered from a purely commercial
point of view) are not exactly the cattle of the Western-ocean trade,
that used some twenty years ago to be thrown overboard on an emergency
and left to swim round and round before they sank. If you can't get more
boats, then sell less tickets. Don't drown so many people on the finest,
calmest night that was ever known in the North Atlantic--even if you have
provided them with a little music to get drowned by. Sell less tickets!
That's the solu
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