Ashland tidings. [volume] (Ashland, Or.) 1876-1919, 1912-05-30
The Home Circle
Thoughts from the Editorial Pen
Lessons of the Titanic Disaster.


calls out bitter denunciation against
the business men whose management
! is responsible. That all such denun-
! Citations, even the bitterest, are eX-
cusable in so far as they afford relief
! to overweight sorrow or anger or
! horror, no one with a spark of the
| human in him would deny. That
| they are useful in so far as they tend
to make ocean travel safer in the fu-
ture, few would wish to dispute. But
/ to all who have eyes to see or ears
! to hear, this Titanic disaster will
carry a deeper lesson than the neces-
! sity for better safety appliances at
| sea; it will arouse higher emotions
| than anger at any person or class.
The ineXcuSable destruction of
! those fifteen hundred human lives
was not all from greed. Though
greed may have played a part along
with many another impulse, it could
| have been only on the surface Greed
does not run deep. This was proved
! by the truest of tests at the climax
of the tragedy. The democratic i'm
! pulse-most distinctly human of all
! human characteristics, braver than
! greed and more absorbing than self
ishness-came uppermost then. At
! that supreme moment, when human
! souls were on trial, the appeal to
brotherhood was intuitive and over
whelming. Kisers inspiring verse
gives us the picture:
christian and Jew, and humble and
high,
Master and servant, they stood at
last,
Bound by a glorious brotherly tie. ="
AT last" But why oaly at last?
Was the spirit of brotherhood absent
before? Had greed crowded it out?
Had consciousness of race or class
| made it insensible to every emotion
but fear of death? This cannot be.
! Fear of death could not awaken a
sense of brotherhood, fear of death
could not make way for a democratic
spirit to rise supreme-not if that
sense, not if this spirit, were less
powerful among human passions than
selfishness. Were the democratic
| spirit indeed non-eXistent or paral-
yZed, were selfishness normally in
supreme command, selfishness would
be strengthened, not weakened, by
! fears of death and hopes of escape.
No; not selfishness but democracy is
the power that moves mankind at
every crisis. Selfishness has no hold
which the basic sense of democracy
| cannot loosen; none which it does
not loosen in fact whenever the test
comes. Yet there is an unhappy sig
nficance, unintended, it may be, but
true, in Kiser's words-'at last" Is
it only ''at last" then, only when
Death duels with life, that the
brotherly tie becomes the tie that
binds, the democratic instinct the in
stinct that triumphs?
1t may seem so. Daily tragedies
! to which the Titanic disaster is by
comparison a trifling incident make
it seem so. These tragedies are due
/ to the laws under which we live;
! they are the frightful price that all
! have to pay for the luxury of some;
/ but as to them, where is the brother
! ly inspiration to drive away greed
where the democratic instinct to de-
| throne the instinct of self love?
! Well may the question be asked. and
| llul VI CHOuSh llldy Iut lluuluS vi lll0
| answer be. But if the answer be
! hard to find, isn't it because it is so
| simple and so near-the pot of gold
at the foot of the garden tree? Isn't
it there in every human heart, but
unawakened? If selfishness stub
bornly prevails in the face of every
day industrial tragedies, may the
reason not be that the philosophy of
! selfishness holds so many university
chairs, is preached in thin spiritual
disguise from so many pulpits, and
gets tremendous emphasis in much
socialist teaching, while so few stir
ring appeals are made to the great
human instinct of democracy?
1t cannot be from any lack of the
! democratic instinct that beneficiaries
of privilege are selfishly indifferent
to the heartsickening perennial trag-
edies of our industrial life. These
folk are like all other folks; they
have the same mixed impulses of
selfishness, generosity and fairness.
Not very different can any of them
| be from those of their own class who
went down with the Titanic If they
| are careless of the awful industrial
tragedies, or cold toward them, it
must be because their democracy is
not awakened. On that doomed YES
sci, along with their brethren of all
classes there, those children of privi-
lege, face to face with the tragic,
were as democratic and as brave as
any. But the industrial tragedies
! those they do not feel, those they do
not see, these are unreal to them,
these they face, if they face them at
all, only as conditions for charitable
relief and not as preventable disas-
ters of the social seas. The thrilling
fact never stirs them, that they them
selves flourish luXuriously upon the
very tragedies that submerge their
brethren in an ocean of servitude
and poverty. What they lack is not
democracy but imagination.
Let the privileged see the indus
trial tragedies they thrive upon,
make them realize the tragical cost
of their selfish luxury, and their icy
greed will melt in the heat of their
democracy. Real as their selfishness
is, truly as it helps to make poverty
and crime, it is no more basic or con-
| trolling with their class than with
any other. Men of the kind who go
bravely to death in sinking ships
hon H.,