in a block of suspended marble. Even while looking over at the aeroplane’s
shadow running prettily over land and sea, I had the impression of extreme
slowness. I imagine that had she suddenly nose-dived out of control, I would
have gone to the final smash without a single additional heartbeat. I am sure I
would not have known. It is doubtless otherwise with the man in control.
But there was no dive, and I returned to earth (after an hour and twenty minutes)
without having felt “bored” for a single second. I descended (by the ladder)
thinking that I would never go flying again. No, never any more—lest its
mysterious fascination, whose invisible wing had brushed my heart up there,
should change to unavailing regret in a man too old for its glory.
SOME REFLECTIONS ON THE LOSS OF THE
TITANIC—1912
It is with a certain 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