"MOTHER! MOTHER!"

Evening Star, Issue 14963, 24 August 1912, Page 2

"MOTHER! MOTHER!"

The Titanic wreck has enriched history with memorable and impressive incidents. Of all these pathetic and tragic stories possibly none is more- suggestive than one which was told by a man called Dillon, and published in the 'Daily Mail.' We have not seen it reproduced in this Dominion, but it is well worthy of being so. Dillon gave evidence before Lord Mersey, and told how he went down with the Titanic, came up again .to the surface, and swam about till he was picked up. In the ' Daily Mail' narrative he said that while a group of men were waiting on the poop deck for the ship to sink, someone remarked : "Go to the first cabin bar room." Several went, and found free whisky being served out by a steward. "Goon, lade," cried the steward; "she is going down." "We made for the whisky," said Dillon ; "we got our share." Apparently he had no thought of being saved, and had made up his mind quite calmly to meet the inevitable. He was for going to a first class cabin below, and thus shuttint; out the visible approach of doom. But a brother fireman dissuaded him. So they returned to the poop deck. One man had a ■cigarette paper; another some tobacco. A " fag" was made, lit, and passed round among a group of 15. Dillon was beside his "pal," Johnny Bannon, when the ship slid underneath. He iemembers next being among men struggling in the water. There was a horrible "row," but he hardly recalls anything shouted articulately. He did, however, hear one man cry out "Mother! Mother!" He himself, a Roman Catholic, repeated "Our Father" and "Hail! Mary." Then he swam away from the noise, and came across Johnny Bannon on a grating. " Cheero, Johnny !" and Bannon answered : " I am all right, Paddy." There was not room on the grating for two. and Dillon, saying " Well, so-long, Johnny," swam off in the direction of a star where Johnny Bannon said he had seen a flashlight. After a few minutes Dillon was picked up by a lifeboat, and was unconscious for a long time. ******* This "unpremeditated lay" has evidently upon it the stamp of truth. It is too simple and natural to have been invented. It may be taken as a transcript of actual facts. And, so taken, it is full of suggestiveness. For one thing, it is suggestive of courage. It surely took a great degree of courage to keep so cool in face of certain death. Perhaps it was this very certainty that contributed to that end. When there is no doubt about. the inevitable, wo can accept it calmly; but as long as there is. we are likely to be restless and perturbed. It is difficult sometimes to distinguish courage from recklessness or bravado. There is a sort of daredevil attitude or action that is sometimes mistaken for courage. A drunken man, for instance, may rush stupidly into a , burning house to rescue the inmates. But it is quite a different sort of bravery that leads a fireman to do it. The latter sees all the peril, yet lakes the risks. The former dares them blindly and ignovantly. But that is recklessness, .not courage. " English courage, it has been said, preserves "its distinctive chara'.'fceristics through all ! " the centuries. It is in action a disre- '• giird of danger when a great end is to "bo attained. And in speech, a definite " leaning to the understatement, born of "an attitude towards danger, and perhaps "toward life itself, of seriousness tem- " pered by irony." Thus, a soldier in a cavalry charge said to his comrade: " This is a- queer way of earning a living. Bill." So, again, a trooper riding out to Colenso to his death utters his good-bye to 'his mate: "Well, so-long, "sonny. Meet you at the Day of Judg-"me-nt." That is of a piece with Dillon's "Well, so-long, Johnny," as he slipped off the grating and committed himself to the sea again. And in. that action what an example we also have of self-abnegation. There was not room for two of them, and Dillon, with, a fine nobility, made way for the safety of hie pal. It was indeed a right chivalrous sacrifice. It deserves to stand side by side with another that lit up the grimness of that tragic night. We have not seen the incident recorded in the newspapers here, but it deserves immortality : A Miss Evans was placed in a boat along with many other women. As it was about to be lowered away, it was discovered that the craft had one more than its quota. The dread, question arose : Who would withdraw? Beside Miss Evans was seated a Mrs Brown, of Denver, mother of several children. Miss Evans said to her : " Your need is greater than mine. You have children who need you. I have none." So saying, she rose from the boat and stepped bark on to the deck of the doomed ship. She, was only 25 years old. She went down with the dTowned. 0 great young heart, all goodness fence | Thy grave by yon grim sea. Who says the race is dying down That "owneth girls like thee? But. possibly the most suggestive incident in Dillon's picturesque narrative is his evidence regarding the utterances of others that he heard. Of these, one in particular -viands out vivid in his memory. It was some poor man crying " Mother! Mother!" That was all. It is in the solemn crises of life, that the deep, elemental things rise unconsciously to the surface. Gibbon relates that while Julian the Apostate was being initiated into the Eleusin.ian mysteries, in the silence of the night and "amid horrid sounds and fiery apparitions," he. made the sign of the Cross. An earthquake rips up the surface and shows us what, is hidden deep down below ; and so with life. Us catastrophes reveal its secrets. Men then, either in superstition or reality, summon up long-forgotten prayers. Dillon t»y« that he repeated "Our Father" and " Hail ! Mary." But that cry of tho unknown swimmer calling "Mother! Mother !" goes deeper than them all. ft gets right down to the elemental founts of being. Bishop Vincent, who speaks of his own mother ae an " incarnation of consistency, fidelity, and self-sacrifice," tells the story of a. dying sailor who asked a shipmate to pray for him. The shipmate replied that he could not pray ; he did not know how. And so, closing his eyes, the dying man said earnestly : " O God, answer my mother's prayers." There may have been some vague fancy of this kind flitting across the brain of the. man whom Dillon heaTd calling out "Mother! Mother!" Perhaps he may have been a, careless ot indifferent son. Perhaps, there was a consciousness of the genius with which his own mother or his wife used to meet the emergencies of life as they rose. But whatever else lay behind that pathetic cry, this certainly is true : The peremptory instinct to turn in death to the origin of life was obeyed, because it could not bo resisted. "Woman is the only con"soler, and if a man knows this "quality of womanliness in his need, he "snatches at it at the last, irrationally " perhaps, but how touchingly! in the "direction where he first learned its " meaning." Browning says with charafclerietic confidence :

Womanliness means only Motherhood : All love begins and ends there. The cry of a perishing human being confirms the fact. Love has its other manifestations and incidents, but all it seems may be compactly summed up in motherhood, which is the beginning and the end of the relation of men and women. This is a fact which no selfishness, no flippancy, no revolutions of social arrangeI ment can abolish. The crazy notion of Plato and of some modern .Socialist sciolists to substitute the State for the mother can never be. Or if it could I lie re would soon be an end of the race, or, at ! any rate, an end of all that lias lifted it above , emigrating rats and free-loving I baboons. '' ******* | We intended to write a word in praise of mothers as emerging out of the cry of this drowning man. But it must be left over for another occasion. We have space for only a further word or two. A writer in one of his books tells this incident : He asked his five-year-old girl what she was going to be. " Oh. I'm going to be a mother," she replied, with immense decision. The man looked out to sea and tried to picture the little figure at his side as a large, comfortable mother of many children. He tried so hard that he forgot to answer her last remark, and she asked anxiously : " Don't you think it a good thing to be?" "Excellent," he answered heartily. " It's is one of the oldest professions; mothers are people we can in no wise do without." "That's what I thought," said Winnie, in a satisfied voice, "and that's what I'm going to be. I made up my mind to it years a.go." It were well if many others were of the same opinion. But it is to be feared Winnie's ambition is losing its hold upon her sex. The cry of empty cradles is heard in ail lands. It is a \ r cry ominous one. It bodes disaster for the nation which it fails to arouse. Women in this age are seeking every other profession except that of motherhood. They may, perhaps, discover in the end of the. day that motherhood is not only the most ancient of the professions, it. is also the most honorable and the most divine. The Jews have a line proverb to the effect that (iod could not be everywhere, and so He made mothers. Readers of Drummond's '.Ascent of Alan' will remember the chapter on ' The Evolution of Mother,' one of the most charming in that fascinating book. He points out how this was the most stupendous task that evolution ever undertook. It began when the. first bud burst from the first plant cell, and it ended with the human mother. There the series stops. The culmination of creation was reached. Nature has never made anything since. ... It is a fact which no human mother can regard Without awe, which no man can realise without a new reverence for woman and a new belief in the higher meaning of Nature. When this fact fails to have its proper place in racial ideals disaster will be at hand. And that is what confronts us now. In one of Stevenson's books there is a doctor who says to his wife that the children are the last word of human imperfection. They cry. my dear; they put vexatious questions. They demand to be fed, to be washed, to be educated, to have their noses Wowed. ... A pair of professed egotists like you and me should avoid offspring like an infidelity. This is a blunt and blatant expression of sentiments that are latent in the heart of multitudes. Philosophy, the trend of modern life—its passion, its pleasure, its profits, all seem to be pushing society towards this precipice. They who eaji arrest the movement will well dec-ervc the name of saviours. Barry Pain once, wrote a delightful little article entitled ' Children Will Be Very Much Worn This Season.' There are many fashions, and most of them foolish, to say the least. But the most ancient and most divine, is the fashion of mothers and children. When it fades out of national life the end will not be far off.