away from them. They shuffle about and groan around their davits.
Whereas the obvious thing to do is to eliminate the man-handled

davits altogether. Don't you think that with all the mechanical
contrivances, with all the generated power on board these ships, it

is about time to get rid of the hundred-years-old, man-power
appliances? Cranes are what is wanted; low, compact cranes with

adjustable heads, one to each set of six or nine boats. And if
people tell you of insuperable difficulties, if they tell you of

the swing and spin of spanned boats, don't you believe them. The
heads of the cranes need not be any higher than the heads of the

davits. The lift required would be only a couple of inches. As to
the spin, there is a way to prevent that if you have in each boat

two men who know what they are about. I have taken up on board a
heavy ship's boat, in the open sea (the ship rolling heavily), with

a common cargo derrick. And a cargo derrick is very much like a
crane; but a crane devised AD HOC would be infinitely easier to

work. We must remember that the loss of this ship has altered the
moral atmosphere. As long as the Titanic is remembered, an ugly

rush for the boats may be feared in case of some accident. You
can't hope to drill into perfect discipline a casual mob of six

hundred firemen and waiters, but in a ship like the Titanic you can
keep on a permanent trustworthy crew of one hundred intelligent

seamen and mechanics who would know their stations for abandoning
ship and would do the work efficiently. The boats could be lowered

with sufficient dispatch. One does not want to let rip one's boats
by the run all at the same time. With six boat-cranes, six boats

would be simultaneously swung, filled, and got away from the side;
and if any sort of order is kept, the ship could be cleared of the

passengers in a quite short time. For there must be boats enough
for the passengers and crew, whether you increase the number of

boats or limit the number of passengers, irrespective of the size
of the ship. That is the only honest course. Any other would be

rather worse than putting sand in the sugar, for which a tradesman
gets fined or imprisoned. Do not let us take a romantic view of

the so-called progress. A company selling passages is a tradesman;
though from the way these people talk and behave you would think

they are benefactors of mankind in some mysterious way, engaged in
some lofty and amazingenterprise.

All these boats should have a motor-engine in them. And, of
course, the glorified tradesman, the mummified official, the

technicians, and all these secretly disconcerted hangers-on to the
enormous ticket-selling enterprise, will raise objections to it

with every air of superiority. But don't believe them. Doesn't it
strike you as absurd that in this age of mechanical propulsion, of

generated power, the boats of such ultra-modern ships are fitted
with oars and sails, implements more than three thousand years old?

Old as the siege of Troy. Older! . . . And I know what I am
talking about. Only six weeks ago I was on the river in an

ancient, rough, ship's boat, fitted with a two-cylinder motor-
engine of 7.5 h.p. Just a common ship's boat, which the man who

owns her uses for taking the workmen and stevedores to and from the
ships loading at the buoys off Greenhithe. She would have carried

some thirty people. No doubt has carried as many daily for many
months. And she can tow a twenty-five ton water barge--which is

also part of that man's business.
It was a boisterous day, half a gale of wind against the flood

tide. Two fellows managed her. A youngster of seventeen was cox
(and a first-rate cox he was too); a fellow in a torn blue jersey,

not much older, of the usual riverside type, looked after the
engine. I spent an hour and a half in her, running up and down and

across that reach. She handled perfectly. With eight or twelve
oars out she could not have done anything like as well. These two

youngsters at my request kept her stationary for ten minutes, with
a touch of engine and helm now and then, within three feet of a

big, ugly mooring buoy over which the water broke and the spray
flew in sheets, and which would have holed her if she had bumped

against it. But she kept her position, it seemed to me, to an
inch, without apparently any trouble to these boys. You could not

have done it with oars. And her engine did not take up the space
of three men, even on the assumption that you would pack people as

tight as sardines in a box.
Not the room of three people, I tell you! But no one would want to

pack a boat like a sardine-box. There must be room enough to
handle the oars. But in that old ship's boat, even if she had been

desperately overcrowded, there was power (manageable by two
riversideyoungsters) to get away quickly from a ship's side (very

important for your safety and to make room for other boats), the
power to keep her easily head to sea, the power to move at five to

seven knots towards a rescuing ship, the power to come safely
alongside. And all that in an engine which did not take up the

room of three people.
A poor boatman who had to scrape together painfully the few

sovereigns of the price had the idea of putting that engine into
his boat. But all these designers, directors, managers,

constructors, and others whom we may include in the generic name of
Yamsi, never thought of it for the boats of the biggest tank on

earth, or rather on sea. And therefore they assume an air of
impatient superiority and make objections--however sick at heart

they may be. And I hope they are; at least, as much as a grocer
who has sold a tin of imperfectsalmon which destroyed only half a

dozen people. And you know, the tinning of salmon was "progress"
as much at least as the building of the Titanic. More, in fact. I

am not attacking shipowners. I care neither more nor less for
Lines, Companies, Combines, and generally for Trade arrayed in

purple and fine linen than the Trade cares for me. But I am
attacking foolish arrogance, which is fair game; the offensive

posture of superiority by which they hide the sense of their guilt,
while the echoes of the miserably hypocritical cries along the

alley-ways of that ship: "Any more women? Any more women?" linger
yet in our ears.

I have been expecting from one or the other of them all bearing the
generic name of Yamsi, something, a sign of some sort, some sincere

utterance, in the course of this Admirable Inquiry, of manly, of
genuine compunction. In vain. All trade talk. Not a whisper--

except for the conventional expression of regret at the beginning
of the yearly report--which otherwise is a cheerful document.

Dividends, you know. The shop is doing well.
And the Admirable Inquiry goes on, punctuated by idiotic laughter,

by paid-for cries of indignation from under legal wigs, bringing to
light the psychology of various commercial characters too stupid to

know that they are giving themselves away--an admirably laborious
inquiry into facts that speak, nay shout, for themselves.

I am not a soft-headed, humanitarian faddist. I have been ordered
in my time to do dangerous work; I have ordered, others to do

dangerous work; I have never ordered a man to do any work I was not
prepared to do myself. I attach no exaggerated value to human

life. But I know it has a value for which the most generous
contributions to the Mansion House and "Heroes" funds cannot pay.

And they cannot pay for it, because people, even of the third class
(excuse my plain speaking), are not cattle. Death has its sting.

If Yamsi's manager's head were forcibly held under the water of his
bath for some little time, he would soon discover that it has.

Some people can only learn from that sort of experience which comes
home to their own dear selves.

I am not a sentimentalist; therefore it is not a great consolation
to me to see all these people breveted as "Heroes" by the penny and

halfpenny Press. It is no consolation at all. In extremity, in
the worst extremity, the majority of people, even of common people,

will behave decently. It's a fact of which only the journalists
don't seem aware. Hence their enthusiasm, I suppose. But I, who

am not a sentimentalist, think it would have been finer if the band
of the Titanic had been quietly saved, instead of being drowned

while playing--whatever tune they were playing, the poor devils. I
would rather they had been saved to support their families than to

see their families supported by the magnificentgenerosity of the
subscribers. I am not consoled by the false, written-up, Drury