MAY 15, 1912 



317 



(0)qOD° [rOcDDOD 



A. I. Root 



Belshazzar the king made a great feast to a thou- 

 sand of his lords, and drank wine before the thou- 

 sand.— Daniel 5:1. 



In the same hour came forth Angers of a man's 

 hand, and wrote over against the candlestick upon 

 the plaster of the wall of the king's palace; and the 

 king saw the part of the hand that wrote.— Daniel 

 5:5. 



Then, the king's countenance was changed, and 

 his thoughts troubled him, so that the joints of his 

 loins werfl loosed, and his knees smote one against 

 another. — Daniel 5 : 6. 



Thou art weighed in the balance, and art found 

 wanting.— Daniel 5 : 27. 



In that night was Belshazzar the king of the 

 Chaldeans slain.— Daniel 5 : 30. 



If you have not read the fifth chapter of 

 Daniel recently I wish you would all take a 

 Bible now, or the first opportunity, and read 

 that chapter. Babylon was at that time be- 

 sieged. If there ever was a time when the 

 king and all his people needed all the wis- 

 dom and sense God had given them to pro- 

 tect their city, it was on that very night. 

 If I am correctly informed, the enemy were 

 at that very hour busy in changing the 

 course of the Euphrates River, and they had 

 just succeeded in making the river-bed dry 

 so that the soldiery could march unhinder- 

 ed through it into the city. The first verse 

 of our text tells us that this heathen king, 

 at a time when he should have been wide 

 awake, and on the alert, was conducting a 

 great banquet or feast, surrounded by a 

 thousand of his lords; and he drank wine 

 — probably the most expensive kind that 

 the world could furnish at that time. We 

 are told many times in the Bible that, al- 

 though the great Father suffers long and is 

 kind, there comes a time when he punishes 

 not only individuals but cities and nations; 

 and his rebuke and punishment are often so 

 severe that the whole wide world sits up and 

 takes notice.* The king was awakened 

 from his drunken orgy by a mysterious 

 hand writing on the wall. No wonder his 

 knees smote one against the other. Good 

 faithful Daniel hesitated not to tell him 

 what it meant — "Thou art weighed in the 

 balances, and art found wanting. Thy king- 

 dom is divided and given to the Medes and 

 Persians." On that same night, probably 

 before he had fully awakened from the ef- 

 fects of his drunken revelry, the city was 

 taken and the ungodly king was slain. 



Now, when I apply the above well-known 

 incident to the tragic fate of the Titanic you 

 may think my illustration is severe and un- 

 warranted. Let us look at it a little. From 

 the very first I decided that the terrible 

 curse that is resting on our nation (and the 

 whole wide world just now more or less) was 

 responsible for the fact that that great ves- 

 sel was plowing along among the icebergs 

 at railroad speed. What else could account 

 for such unwarranted and unheard-of course 



* He will not always chide; neither will he keep 

 his anger forever.— Psalm 103 : 9. 



of action? • You have all read, perhaps, 

 over and over, the accounts of the tragedy. 

 It was after we had had several newspaper 

 accounts of the event that I found in one 

 corner of a daily an intimation that some of 

 the officers had been drinking. Then it 

 came out little by little. The only man on 

 the lookout, when he was more needed, per- 

 haps, than ever before in his life, was asleep. 

 Another item some days later informed us 

 that the lookout officer on that great steam- 

 er, costing toward ten millions, had not 

 even 2l field-glass. The pilot or lookout had 

 lost the glass belonging to his post; and when 

 he applied to the proper authority I think 

 that this "authority" must have been 

 drinking also, for the pilot was told that 

 "none would be furnished" him. Other 

 vessels in that region were crawling along 

 slowly, and taking every precaution to avoid 

 accidents from icebergs. I know a little 

 about the matter, for my youngest daughter 

 was on a ship when it struck an iceberg; 

 and, although the motion of the vessel was 

 slowed down to almost nothing, it tipped 

 the vessel over on its side, and made such a 

 consternation that those on board will nev- 

 er forget it. Lest you think I am misin- 

 formed, permit me to give the following ex- 

 tract from the American Advance for April 

 27: 



As the press showed Indications of covering up 

 the seemingly well-founded report that the Titanic 

 went to her death because of drunkenness aboard. 

 American Advance wired to Dr. A. S. Gregg, Field 

 Superintendent of the International Reform Bu- 

 reau, to find out the facts. He wires, as we go to 

 press: 



" Louis Klein, a Hungarian seaman of the Titanic 

 crew, who came here in search of work, immediate- 

 ly after the landing of the survivors of the wreck, 

 has made a statement to the Austro-Hungarian 

 consulate and to the federal authorities, charging 

 that some men were drunk and that the only man 

 in the lookout of the Titanic was asleep at the time 

 the ship struck. He says the stewards had given 

 men champagne from partly empty bottles. Klein 

 was taken to Washington last night by a deputy 

 United States Marshal to testify before the Senate 

 Committee which is investigating the Titanic disas- 



Aiiierican Advance has taken steps to have a starf 

 correspondent on the ground at Washington and 

 in attendance at the Senate Committee's hearings. 

 We intend to probe the matter to the bottom, un- 

 cover the full facts, and we will not stick them 

 away in an obscure corner of the paper, either. We 

 have no liquor advertising to lose. 



"The night the ship went down." said Klein, ac- 

 cording to dispatches from Cleveland, " I was do- 

 ing patrol duty on the promenade deck, starboard 

 side. I took the watch at 9 :30 o'clock, and was to 

 keep it for six hours." 



STEWARDS served WINE TO MEN. 



" There was a ball following a banquet of some 

 kind going on in the saloon, and the captain and 



* We copy the following from the Scientific Amer- 

 ican for April 27 in regard to the disaster: 



" How such an experienced commander as Cap- 

 tain Smith should have driven his ship at full speed, 

 and in the night, when he knew that he was in 

 the proximity of heavy Ice-flelds, is a mystery 

 which may never be cleared up. 



"That underwater blow, deadly in its nature, 

 would scarcely have been fatal had the ship been 

 put, as she should have been, under half speed." 



