386 The Wreck of the Titanic [1912 



Europeans. The officials all go away more or less rich, and the Gov- 

 ernors-General amass fortunes. Borthwick is of opinion that if the 

 Turks can get artillery enough to do it, they may drive the Italians into 

 the sea at Tripoli, and that then the whole of native North Africa will 

 rise in Tunis and Algeria as well as in Morocco. The plan is an ad- 

 venturous one, and he is aware that he is running a great risk. He has 

 been three years in India serving in a cavalry regiment and left it four 

 years ago. I advised him as a first step to go to Constantinople, and 

 see what help he could get there. He came to me from Stead, who 

 had suggested to him that I might help him to get the money necessary. 



" 16th April. — There has been an astonishing disaster at sea, the 

 Titanic, the largest vessel ever built, wrecked in mid Atlantic by col- 

 lision with an iceberg. It was her first voyage, and she was carrying 

 over 1,000 passengers to New York, many of them millionaires. Most 

 of the women and children seem to have been put in boats and picked 

 up by a passing steamer, but the rest have perished, over 1,000 souls, 

 including the ship's company. Among them is Stead, about whom I 

 was talking to Borthwick last Sunday, the very day of the wreck. He 

 was on his way on some newspaper business, and was to have written 

 a sensational account of the voyage. I cannot say I ever liked or re- 

 spected Stead, he was too much of a charlatan. It is impossible that a 

 man who has made himself the agent of the Russian autocracy, who 

 has intrigued for the restoration of the ex-Khedive Ismail, and who 

 has been named by Cecil Rhodes executor of his will, all the while 

 calling himself a friend of liberty, can have been quite honest. The 

 Irish always refused to trust him, and they were right. Still one can- 

 not help feeling a pang at so appalling an end. One thing is consoling 

 in these great disasters, the proof given that Nature is not quite yet the 

 slave of Man, but is able to rise even now in her wrath and destroy 

 him. Also if any large number of human beings could be better 

 spared than another it would be just these American millionaires with 

 their wealth and insolence. 



" 20th April.— Newbuildings. There has been a demonstration of 

 bombarding the Dardanelles by the Italians, a childish and cowardly 

 proceeding, the ships opening fire at 8,000 yards, and firing 342 shots 

 without any result whatever. 



" 21st April (Sunday). — I have been reading Davitt's book, the ' Fall 

 of Feudalism,' an interesting bit of Irish history, though a stupid title, 

 also Barry O'Brien's ' Life of Parnell.' The Turco-Italian war drags 

 on, but is beginning to get on the English commercial nerves, the pas- 

 sage of mercantile ships having been blocked through the Dardanelles 

 by the Italian attack. Nearly all our newspapers now lay the blame 

 of the war on Italy, even those which have hitherto been most in Italy's 

 favour. 



