RESPONSIBILITY OF SHIPPING COMPANIES.

Colonist, Volume LVI, Issue 13489, 8 June 1914, Page 5

RESPONSIBILITY OF SHIPPING COMPANIES.

MR. HOLMAN'S STRICTURES

FURTHER REPLY TO CRITICISM,

Sydney, June 6

The Hon. W. A. Holman, State Premier, replying to Canadian resentment of his remarks concerning the Empress of Ireland disaster, maintains the view that the inquiry ought not to be confined to a few unfortunate seamen or officers, butought to extend to those in. chief responsibility, the commercial men who agreed to send the public from Canada to Europe, but as a matter of fact sent them from Canada to the next world. That alone was sufficient ground for putting those men on trial. ;

"I do not say," adds Mr. Holman, "that they ought to be convicted. If they can show as effusively as they assure their tress backers that the ship represented the last word in naval architecture/- then the trial will not hurt them; but until they can show that, the fact that a calamity occurred under their direction to men and women who trusted themselves to their invitation is a prima facie case against them. This is further upheld by the Cunard Company's boast that it has never lost a passenger or aletter —an illustration of what naval skill can accomplish in -securing the safety of the travelling public when those powers are directed primarily to maintaining public safety, and not to inflating dividends." ;