The Birmingham age-herald., 1912-04-30

"HE dimensions of the tragedy gave
 it peculiar dignity, and the story
 \ was freighted with pathos unutter- able. It seems a pity that the wash of the waves over the tunnels of the Titanic and the walls of 16O0 drowning men did not awe to silence the irrepressibles whose "metier' is to embellish every important feature of the days news with pictur- esque detail conjured from fancy rather than based upon fact. The press should not have cheapeped it's reports of the dis aster with over-strained accounts of incl dental events. No professional treatment of the bare facts. and the big facts. of the unexampled horror could heighten it's dramatic quality-to use an adjective that seems wholly inadequate. Yet such was the flood of picturesque detail that all newspapers shared guilt as publishers of tawdry flub-dub some of which was i'm probable even to the eye of the unini- tiated. and much of which was to the initiated plain invention.
 The high water mark of pathos regis tered by writer attempting pathos was the story that a certain rich MT. Guggen-
 iNAAAg iitibliS llldl llC must 6t QONu Nltii the laundering leviathan, went to his cabin and put on his evening clothes, ito die like gentleman" Had the tale been true 1t would have been searchingly pa- thetic, but in a way unintended by the narrator. The spectacle of a millionaire soaced in his sodden snobbishness even in the hour of death by looking at himself in his mirror in his suite de luxe and feel ing that at any rate he was dressed as a member of the aristocracy should be, might well bring tears to eyes hardened to tales-in-prnt of ships striking sunken rocks, 7or submerged ieebergs while eager winds were kissing every sail" and going to the bottom like brick dropped into a bucket. But, of course, the story originated in fertile fancy.
 Not merely improbable, but wholly pre- posterous, is the story that MT lsmay dined and wined, the officers Sunday evening, and that so much champagne overfiowed from his hospitable board that stewards gave it to members of the crew, and that "all hands and the cook" as they say at sea, were drunk when the Titanic struck the iceberg. Such a story might have been told, with more proba- bility of its being believed, about the wrecking of a Russian man of war. Pop ular imagination always pictures the Rus sian naval officer as a wine bibber and a man who has no regard for religion or for decency. But a debauch on the Brit ish liner on Sunday evening. indulged in by one of the owners and sundry officers, ts- H. -1 the jelly wobble danced by the ladies of Queen Mary's suite at court ball.
 The story that caps the climax was publshed-by the Courier-Journal in com mon with it's contemporaries being told by George Bradley, a first cabin passen- ger. MT. Bradley is represented as tell ing how he and a few other brave souls kept game of cards going for three quarters of an hour after the accident to allay the fears of the other passengers. Henry B. Harris-is some misguided in dividual trying to do dead theatrical man a good turn by a bit of press agen- cy?-escorted his wife to lifeboat and returned to the game, whispering to Bradley to keep it going, and flor the sake of the women and children make no sign' How the band played "Alexan- der's Ragtime Band and the men at the card table played bridge, and how the crowd that might otherwise have gone out on deck and found out that the. ship was sinking hung around to see the play CTS play, makes good enough detail But | it is an incredible story for several req sons. one of those reasons is that an ex- citing game of cards on Sunday evening in the saloon of British liner is hardly among tine probabilities.
 l The German boats are said to lead all l the rest in caring for the comfort of their i patrons. Their orchestras play sacred music early Sunday morning, while every bodys abed. Nobody has to go to church, and as the godly who awake and partici- pate, in spirit, in the exercises and the ungodly who awake and return. to slum- her are alike hidden from view no invid- I ious comparisons can be made. But upon British steamers there are divine services. and, usually. sermons And the | Sabbath is otherwise, and rigdly, ob- served. There are ten commandments east and west of Suez. The relaxing heat of the Indian ocean. where green snakes
 float upon the surface of the sea and schools of flying fish scud to port and | starboard from the ships fore foot" is no excuse for not observing the Sabbath
 under the British fag. The chill blasts
 of the North Atlantic when the icebergs
 are adrift is no excuse for adopting the
 familiar advice of Horace as to unbend- ing upcn fitting occasion. Probably
 George Bradley is fictitious. If he is not
 he is hctionist-
 I And mark how plain tale puts down by comparson-the cheap fabrication oi I the writers for the press who fancied theil
 genius too great to content itself with
 chroniciing the facts and must needs i'm