ertain bitterness that one must admit to oneself that the
late _S.S. Titanic_ had a "good press." It is perhaps because I have no
great practice of daily newspapers (I have never seen so many of them
together lying about my room) that the white spaces and the big lettering
of the headlines have an incongruously festive air to my eyes, a
disagreeable effect of a feverish exploitation of a sensational God-send.
And if ever a loss at sea fell under the definition, in the terms of a
bill of lading, of Act of God, this one does, in its magnitude,
suddenness and severity; and in the chastening influence it should have
on the self-confidence of mankind.

I say this with all the seriousness the occasion demands, though I have
neither the competence nor the wish to take a theological view of this
great misfortune, sending so many souls to their last account. It is but
a natural _reflection_. Another one flowing also from the phraseology of
bills of lading (a bill of lading is a shipping document limiting in
certain of its clauses the liability of the carrier) is that the "King's
Enemies" of a more or less overt sort are not altogether sorry that this
fatal mishap should strike the prestige of the greatest Merchant Service
of the world. I believe that not a thousand miles from these shores
certain public prints have betrayed in gothic letters their
satisfaction--to speak plainly--by rather ill-natured comments.

In what light one is to look at the action of the American Senate is more
difficult to say. From a certain point of view the sight of the august
senators of a great Power rushing to New York and beginning to bully and
badger the luckless "Yamsi"--on the very quay-side so to speak--seems to
furnish the Shakespearian touch of the comic to the real tragedy of the
fatuous drowning of all these people who to the last moment put their
trust in mere bigness, in the reckless affirmations of commercial men and
mere technicians and in the irresponsible paragraphs of the newspapers
booming these ships! Yes, a grim touch of comedy. One asks oneself what
these men are after, with this very provincial display of authority. I
beg my friends in the United States pardon for calling these zealous
senators men. I don't wish to be disrespectful. They may be of the
stature of demi-gods for all I know, but at that great distance from the
shores of effete Europe and in the presence of so many guileless dead,
their size seems diminishe