PROMPT REFORMS
The terrible sacrifice of the Titanic, however, is to have its fruit in safety for the future. The official announcement is
A diagrammatic map showing how United States warships could police the transatlantic steamship lanes, warn steamships of icebergs and compel foolhardy captains to keep out of danger. The arrows show the direction from which the dangerous floes and bergs float. The northern and southern lanes are shown on the map.
[Description: Diagram of the North Atlantic, indicating the northern and southern routes from England to New York. Arrows indicate the paths of the icebergs; warships are drawn in between the arrows and the northern lane. ]Prompt, immediate and gratifying reform marks this action of the International Mercantile Marine. It is doubtless true that this precaution ought to have been taken without waiting for a loss of life such as makes all previous marine disasters seem trivial. But the public itself has been inert. For thirty years, since Plimsoll's day, every intelligent passenger knew that every British vessel was deficient in life-boats, but neither public opinion nor the public press took this matter up. There were no questions in Parliament and no measures introduced in Congress. Even the legislation by which the United States permitted English vessels reaching American ports to avoid the legal requirements of American statute law (which requires a seat in the life-boats for every passenger and every member of the crew) attracted no public attention, and occasional references to the subject by those better informed did nothing to awake action.
But this is past. Those who died bravely without complaint and with sacrificing regard for others did not lose their lives in vain. The safety of all travelers for all times to come under every civilized flag is to be greater through their sacrifice.
It would be idle to think that this was due simply to parsimony. It was really due to the false and vicious notion that life at sea must be made showy, sumptuous and magnificent. The absence of life-boats was not due to their cost, but to the demand for a great promenade deck, with ample space to look out on the sea with which a continuous row of life-boats would have interfered, and to the general tendency to lavish money on the luxuries of a voyage instead of first insuring its safety.