The Daily News. TUESDAY, APRIL 23, 1912. THE TITANIC.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIV, Issue 251, 23 April 1912, Page 4

The Daily News. TUESDAY, APRIL 23, 1912. THE TITANIC.

After a week's delay we are now in possession of something like the real truth toncerning the wreck of the ill-fated liner Titanic. The story is a deplorable one, an<l for unadulterated horror and the enormity of its catastrophe it takes rank as the greatest maritime disaster ever recorded in the history of the world. Its tragic suddenness and its appalling results have horrified the whole civilised world, and the immense loss of life is a dear price to pay for the very obvious lessons that are to be learnt from the wreck. Now that the first edge has worn off the purely tragic side of the calamity, we can get a clearer perspective of the occurrences that led to it. It is easy to lock the stable door after the steed has been stolen, but wisdom after the event has at least its uses. It ! is fairly obvious now that the huge liner was engaged in an attempt to break the Atlantic record for a maiden voyage and that in pursuit of this object she was driven at an excessive speed through a region which she had been warned by sister ships was dangerous to navigation. The result was not inevitable, but it was all too sadly probable, and if it should be proved that this was the case it quite justifies the American press commentary of criminality. Even after the accident occurred there does not seem to have been any properly organised effort to minimise it, although the passengers i seem to have been more the victims of a misplaced confidence in the stability of

the slap than to have been neglected by the officers in charge. It is hardly credible to imagine many of them retiring to their beds while the ship was actually sinking, whilst others stood at the rail aiul ridiculed those who had taken to the boat 3as "landlubbers." Yet so the ■story runs, and even if the allegations of insufficient boat accommodation are proved to be incorrect, it remains in evidence that a number of the earlier boats left the ship half-filled because there was no desire on the part of the passengers to enter them. This, of course, makes the position all the more lamentable, for had the gravity of the disaster been properly realised the dreadful loss of life might apparently have been easily minimised. It is to be hoped that the Investigation Committee set up by the Senate will make the most searching enquiry into the details of the wreck and of the sinister stories that are more than hinted at in our cablegrams. One point in particular which calls for speedy explanation is the extraordinary reticence displayed for the best part of a week concerning the details of the extent of the disaster. It is stated that this conspiracy of silence was deliberately indulged in for commercial purposes, with a view to giving time for the, re-insurance of the Titanic's cargo. If this is so no punishment would be too severe for those responsible. The callous inhumanity of such an action is positively brutal, for friends and relatives on shore, nearly mad with anxiety, had a moral right to the: earliest and fullest information that it was possible to convey. The suggestion, too, that the officers who were saved were anxious to make their way i immediately to England without giving evidence before the committee of the [ Senate is ugly and suggestive. In the j present temper of the public nothing but I the most exhaustive enquiry will be satisfactory, and such an enquiry is due to the friends and relatives of those who were lost. If the wrecke should result in a better control of the highways of the sea and the increasing safety of those who go down to the sea in ships, those' who died in the calm horror of that fatal Sunday night will not have died in vain*