Steven Biel

Titanica

An excerpt

Poems

A thousand years since, Fate had planned
  To stage a playlet on the sea,
And moved her pawns with patient hand
  To build a merry comedy.

She caught the raindrops from the sky
  And welded them with icy blows,
Until they towered mountain high --
  An iceberg mid the Northland floes.

A thousand years have come and gone
  While men have slowly learned their part.
Each gave his little brain or brawn,
  That Fate might try her comic art.

Some burrowed deep in endless night,
  To break the steel from earth's strong grip,
While others forged the atoms bright
  And built for Fate a noble ship.

They pitted toil and ant-like skill
  Against the chance of Fate's grim game;
With hope to fright her cruel will,
  They gave their craft a giant's name.

And when the scene and stage were set,
  And all things tuned in time and space,
The puppet ship and iceberg met
  True in the long appointed place.

A little crash that scarce was heard
  Across the pulsing deep a mile,
A little cry, a frightened word,
  And Fate put on an age-worn smile.

The stars looked down in cold content,
  The waves rolled on their endless way,
And jaded Fate, her interest spent,
  Began to plot another play.

Sermons and Religious Views

I have used the event of the sinking of the Titanic because it is tremendously in the general mind at the moment and on the public nerve, and because it is the terrific and ghastly illustration of what things come to when men throw God out at the door and take a golden calf in at the window.

I have used it because it exhibits on a monstrous scale that everything is for existence and nothing for life, and that everything lends an ear to the hard, cold, glittering metallic basis of the dollar. I am impelled to this not by any motive of anger, but by indignation that is hot and holy.

For all this sorrow, this horrible slaughter, this parting of loved ones, tragic rending of families, separation of husbands and wives, fathers and children, lovers and brides, at the moment of the ship's immersion, was totally without reason.

This last week, since Tuesday morning, has been a serious one-serious not only for the bereaved, but serious for the city, the country, and the world. The very complexion of the town has altered itself. The public has been imaginatively the witness of an appalling tragedy. We have been sobered by it, for it has cut down into the very fabric of our souls. We have been shaken by it, for it has pierced us to a point deeper than where we ordinarily live. It has bored down into the substrata of our being.

Different temperaments have, of course, seized upon different aspects of this unparalleled tragedy. Each of you has your own line of contemplation. I am going to tell you mine, and I am going to cut as close to the line of truth and to the nerve of the sensitive heart as I know how; for if this event is treated as it ought to be it is going to produce some searchings of heart that will modify to a degree the attitude of the general mind toward certain vital questions of individual and public life.

The picture which presents itself before my eyes is that of the glassy, glaring eyes of the victims, staring meaninglessly at the gilded furnishings of this sunken palace of the sea; dead helplessness wrapped in priceless luxury; jewels valued in seven figures becoming the strange playthings of the queer creatures that sport in the dark depths. Everything for existence, nothing for life. Grand men, charming women, beautiful babies, all becoming horrible in the midst of the glittering splendor of a $10,000,000 casket!

And there was no need of it. It is just so much sacrifice laid upon the accursed altar of the dollar. The boat had no business to be running in that lane. They knew that the ice was there. They dared it. They would dare it now were it not for the public. It is cheaper to run by the short route. There is more money in it for the stockholders. The multi-millionaires want more money. They want as much as they can get of it. The coal is now saved. It is starting a little mine at the bottom of the ocean between Sable Island and Cape Race.

It is a lesson all around to the effect that commercialism, when pushed beyond a certain pace, breaks down and results in stringency and poverty; and that action, when crowded, produces reaction that wipes out the results of action.

And then there is the matter of the insufficiency of lifeboats. I recall now what a Captain on an ocean liner said to me twenty years ago. We were standing on the deck, and he admitted then that his ship had insufficient lifeboats to save all in case of accident.

"What would you do if the ship were sinking?" I asked him.

"We would take off as many as we could and land them," he replied. Then he continued, with a fiendish chuckle, "And then we'd come back for the rest."

This cruel Captain's words have been repeated often since. But those boats that landed last Thursday night did not go back for the rest. Those that remained will stay there. The steamship companies want payment for what they carry. Lifeboats and rafts don't pay dividends. Passengers do. And they pay in advance and the money is in the treasury, ready to be divided as dividends.

Demands for improvements are always treated the same way. If neither Government nor the people demanded them the steamship companies would furnish lifeboats if the individual members of these companies-stanch, wealthy, godly men, most of them-thought as much of the value of human life as they do of what they receive in passage money. Willing to risk loss of life rather than diminish net gains! More commercialism! Lives against ducats! More worship of the golden calf! Worshipping God in the sanctuary and worshipping Mammon in the steamship business!

We can conceive no severer punishment for those steamship men-the one who is here now with the others*-than to be compelled to read and reread the harrowing details of those two hours from midnight to 2 a.m. on the morning of the sinking of the ship. We will not be angry with them. Rather will we pity them, for if their hearts have not been hardened to the consistency of the metal in which they deal, the perusal of the ghastly record, the contemplation of the vivid drama of men leaping to their death, bidding long good-byes to those loved ones, and all to the accompaniment of the infernal music of the orchestra, ought to give them a foretaste of the tortures of the damned.

Yes, we pity them, for unless their hearts are clean gone and burnt to a crisp these days are to them days of remorse, of gnawing of the soul. Their guilt is not momentary. It is driven home with a gold hammer, which will beat them into sensibility. Had Providence held back the tragedy the moral lesson only would have been delayed.

The two sore spots which really run into one another and which constitute the disease that is gnawing into our civilization are love of money and passion for luxury. Those two combined are what sunk the Titanic and sent 1,500 souls prematurely to their final account.

The passengers wanted to cross the Atlantic in a palace, and in order to satisfy them and win the spoils that would come by satisfying them, the ship management ordered the construction of a boat that would sacrifice the safety of passengers to the gratification of their tastes.

Then they ran the boat in a latitude, at a rate of speed, and under conditions of peculiar danger-all to gratify that silly passion for haste that comes with money and with the love of money. The boat went plowing through the sea at the rate of 211/2 knots an hour, with the Captain off the bridge and banqueting down in the salon, we are informed, in company with the official head of the line. That is the entire story. Money was the fundamental factor in the entire business.

There is one spot of brightness, only one. It puts a goodly touch of glory on the sinking Titanic that magnanimity, which is wont to slumber in every human soul, awakened and caused such a demonstration as we have seen for the last few days. Chivalrous death is better than cowardly living.

Songs

Chorus

God moves on the water,
God moves on the water,
God moves on the water,
And the people had to run and pray.

In the year of nineteen and twelve,
On-a April the thirteenth day,
When the great Titanic was sinkin' down,
Well, the peoples had to run and pray.

When the lifeboat got to the landin',
The womens turned around
Cryin', "Look 'way cross that ocean, Lawdy,
At my husband drown."

Cap'n Smith was a-lyin' down,
Was asleep for he was tired;
Well, he woke up in a great fright,
As many gunshots were fired.

Well, that Jacob Nash was a millionaire,
Lawd, he had plenty of money to spare;
When the great Titanic was sinkin' down,
Well, he could not pay his fare.

News and Reflections

The picture that inevitably presents itself, in view of what is known, is of men like John Jacob Astor, master of scores of millions; Benjamin Guggenheim of the famous family of bankers; Isidor Straus, a merchant prince; William T. Stead, veteran journalist; Major Archibald W. Butt, soldier; Washington Roebling, noted engineer -- of any or all of these men stepping aside, bravely, gallantly remaining to die that the place he otherwise might have filled could perhaps be taken by some sabot-shod, shawl-enshrouded, illiterate and penniless peasant woman of Europe. Thus the stream of women with toddling infants, or babes in arms, perhaps most of them soon to be widowed, filed up from the cabins and over the side and away to life.

Advertisements

There has just been enacted the greatest ocean tragedy the world ever saw -- the sinking of the gigantic ocean liner "Titanic" on her maiden voyage. The greatest ship ever built, with her precious cargo of human freight, went to the bottom of the ocean a thousand miles from shore amid a wilderness of icebergs. Multi-millionaires, authors, statesmen and immigrants share the same watery grave. Never before was there such an exhibition of heroism and chivalry. Picture the ship's musicians, ankle deep in the rising flood, trying to soften the anguish of the dying with strains of melody; husbands handing their wives into the life boats, while deluding them with false assurances of their own safety. Imagine that noble wife, choosing perhaps the happier part, and calmly refusing to go and remaining on the doomed ship by her husband's side. See the famous and brilliant men ungrudgingly standing aside for the poor peasant woman of the steerage. These heroes of real life bore themselves in a way that leaves the world richer and better for their having lived and died. Here, indeed, is a glorious glimpse of what man can do in a supreme moment. The whole world is afire with sympathy and sorrow, and every one who reads must have this permanent pictorial and descriptive record of the greatest ocean disaster in the world's history, the Story of the Wreck of the Titanic.

This great book, profuse with scores of wonderful illustrations, tells all the thrilling story, with personal accounts of heroic self-sacrifice, marvelous escapes, and terrible sufferings. It contains over three hundred and fifty pages of the most vivid descriptions that ever were penned by man. Every home in the nation must have this book. It is an inspiring example of heroism for the young, and will be treasured and cherished by the old. This is your opportunity to own a copy of This Great "Memorial Edition" For Only $1.00.

THE TITANIC DISASTER; Authentic; Realistic; Heartrending; Bonanza for Agents; low price; big terms; outfit free. ZIEGLER CO.; Phila., Pa.