Chapter XII: Part 12

The Abdication Edict can not fail to be of interest to students of the science of politics. The Throne itself is converted into a bridge to facilitate the transition from the monarchical to the republican form of government. The Emperor remains absolute to the last, and the very Republican Constitution, which involves his own disappearance from political existence, is created by the fiat of the Emperor in his last official utterance. Theoretically, the Republic is established not by a people in arms acting in opposition to the imperial will, but by the Emperor acting with august benevolence for his people's good. The cynic may smile at the transparency of the attempt to represent the abdication as entirely voluntary, but in this procedure we find something more than a mere "face-saving" device intended for the purpose of effecting a dignified retreat in the hour of disaster.

Perhaps the greatest interest of the decree centers in its appeal to the wisdom of the national sages, and its acceptance of their theory as to the ultimate seat of political sovereignty. The heart of the drafter may have quailed when he wrote the words that signified the surrender of the imperial power, but the spirit of Mencius guided his hand. It now remains for us to hope that the teachings of the wise men of old, which have been obeyed to such momentous issues by the last of the Emperors, will not be treated with contempt by his Republican successors.

TAI-CHI QUO

The entire civilized world, as well as China, is to be heartily congratulated upon the glorious revolution which has been sweeping over that vast ancient empire, and which is now practically assured of success. "Just as conflagrations light up the whole city," says Victor Hugo, "revolutions light up the whole human race." Of no revolution recorded in the world's history can this be said with a greater degree of truth than of the present revolution in China. It spells the overthrow of monarchy, which has existed there for over forty centuries, and the downfall of a dynasty which has been the enemy of human progress for the last two hundred and seventy years. It effects the recognition and establishment of personal liberty, the sovereignty of man over himself, for four hundred and thirty-two million souls, one-third of the world's total population.

The Chinese revolution marks, in short, a great, decisive step in the onward march of human progress. It benefits not only China, but the whole world, for just as a given society should measure its prosperity not by the welfare of a group of individuals, but by the welfare of the entire community, so must humanity estimate its progress according to the well-being of the whole human race. Society can not be considered to be in a far advanced stage of civilization if one-third of the globe's inhabitants are suffering under the oppression and tyranny of a one-man rule. Democracy can not be said to exist if a great portion of the people on the earth have not even political freedom. Real democracy exists only when all men are free and equal. Hence, any movement which brings about the recognition and establishment of personal liberty for one-third of the members of the human family, as the Chinese revolution is doing, may well be pronounced to be beneficial to mankind.

But is it really true and credible that conservative, slumbering, and "mysterious" China is actually having a revolution, that beautiful and terrible thing, that angel in the garb of a monster? If it is, what is the cause of the revolution? What will be its ultimate outcome? What will follow its success? Will a republic be established and will it work successfully? These and many other questions pertaining to the Chinese situation have been asked, not only by skeptics, but also by persons interested in China and human progress.

There can be no doubt that China is in earnest about what she is doing. Even the skeptics who called the revolution a "mob movement," or another "Boxer uprising," at its early stage must now admit the truth of the matter. The admirable order and discipline which have characterized its proceedings conclusively prove that the revolution is a well-organized movement, directed by men of ability, intelligence, and humanitarian principles. Sacredness of life and its rights, for which they are fighting, have generally guided the conduct of the rebels. The mob element has been conspicuous by its absence from their ranks. It is very doubtful whether a revolution involving such an immense territory and so many millions of people as are involved in this one could be effected with less bloodshed than has thus far marked the Chinese revolution. If some allowance be made for exaggeration in the newspaper reports of the loss of lives and of the disorders that have occurred during the struggle, allowance which is always permissible and even wise for one to make, there has been very little unnecessary bloodshed committed by the revolutionists.

Although anti-Manchu spirit was a prominent factor in bringing about the uprising, it has been subordinated by the larger idea of humanity. With the exception of a few instances of unnecessary destruction of Manchu lives at the beginning of the outbreak, members of that tribe have been shown great clemency. The rebel leaders have impressed upon the minds of their followers that their first duty is to respect life and property, and have summarily punished those having any inclination to loot or kill. Despite the numerous outrages and acts of brutality by the Manchus and imperial troops, the revolutionaries have been moderate, lenient, and humane in their treatment of their prisoners and enemies. Unnecessary bloodshed has been avoided by them as much as possible. As Dr. Wu Ting-fang has said: "The most glorious page of China's history is being written with a bloodless pen." Regarding the cause of the revolution, it must be noted that the revolt was not a sudden, sporadic movement, nor the result of any single event. It is the outcome of a long series of events, the culmination of the friction and contact with the Western world in the last half-century, especially the last thirty years, and of the importation of Western ideas and methods into China by her foreign-educated students and other agents.

During the last decade, especially the last five years, there has been a most wonderful awakening among the people in the empire. One could almost see the growth of national consciousness, so rapidly has it developed. When the people fully realized their shortcomings and their country's deplorable weakness as it has been constantly brought out in her dealings with foreign Powers, they fell into a state of dissatisfaction and profound unrest. Filled with the shame of national disgrace and imbued with democratic ideas, they have been crying for a strong and liberal government, but their pleas and protests have been in most cases ignored and in a few cases responded to with half-hearted superficial reforms which are far from satisfactory to the progressives. The Manchu government has followed its traditional _laissez faire_ policy in the face of foreign aggressions and threatening dangers of the empire's partition, with no thought of the morrow. Until now it has been completely blind to the force of the popular will and has deemed it not worth while to bother with the common people.

Long ago patriotic Chinese gave up hope in the Manchu government and realized that China's salvation lay in the taking over of the management of affairs into their own hands. For over a decade Dr. Sun Yat-sen and other Chinese of courage and ability, mostly those with a Western education, have been busily engaged in secretly preaching revolutionary doctrines among their fellow countrymen and preparing for a general outbreak. They collected numerous followers and a large sum of money. The revolutionary propaganda was being spread country-wide, among the gentry and soldiers, and even among enlightened government officials, in spite of governmental persecution and strict vigilance. Revolutionary literature was being widely circulated, notwithstanding the rigid official censorship.

Added to all this are the ever important economic causes. Famines and floods in recent years have greatly intensified the already strong feeling of discontent and unrest, and served to pile up more fuel for the general conflagration.

In short, the whole nation was like a forest of dry leaves which needed but a single fire spark to make it blaze. Hence, when the revolution broke out on the memorable 10th of October, 1911, at Wu-Chang, it spread like a forest fire. Within the short period of two weeks fourteen of the eighteen provinces of China proper joined in the movement one after another with amazing rapidity. Everywhere people welcomed the advent of the revolutionary army as the drought-stricken would rejoice at the coming rain, or the hungry at the sight of food. The great wave of democratic sentiment which had swept over Europe, America, and the islands of Japan at last reached the Chinese shore, and is now rolling along resistlessly over the immense empire toward its final goal--a world-wide democracy.

A STEP TOWARD WORLD PEACE

THE UNITED STATES ARBITRATION TREATIES A.D. 1912

HON. WILLIAM H. TAFT

Later generations will doubtless note, as one of the main manifestations of our present age, its progress in international arbitration, in the substitution of justice for force as the means of deciding disputes between nations. On March 7, 1912, the United States Senate, after months of argument, finally agreed to ratify two arbitration treaties which President Taft had arranged with England and France. True, the Senate, before thus establishing the treaties, struck out their most far-reaching article, an agreement that every disagreement whatsoever should be referred to a Joint High Commission. Without this clause the treaties still leave a bare possibility of warfare over questions of "national honor" or "national policy"; but practically they put an end to war forever as between the United States and its two great historic rivals.

These two treaties were the last and most important of 154 such arbitration treaties arranged since the recent inauguration of the great World Peace movement. They are here described by President Taft himself in an article reprinted with his approval from the _Woman's Home Companion._ His work as a leader in the cause of peace is likely to be remembered as the most important of his administration. In 1913 his purpose was carried forward by William J. Bryan as the United States Secretary of State. Mr. Bryan evolved a general "Plan of Arbitration," which during the first year of its suggestion was adopted by thirty-one of the smaller nations to govern their dealings with the United States. Thus the strong promises international justice to the weak.

The development of the doctrine of international arbitration, considered from the standpoint of its ultimate benefits to the human race, is the most vital movement of modern times. In its relation to the well-being of the men and women of this and ensuing generations, it exceeds in importance the proper solution of various economic problems which are constant themes of legislative discussion or enactment. It is engaging the attention of many of the most enlightened minds of the civilized world. It derives impetus from the influence of churches, regardless of denominational differences. Societies of noble-minded women, organizations of worthy men, are giving their moral and material support to governmental agencies in their effort to eliminate, as causes of war, disputes which frequently have led to armed conflicts between nations.

The progress already made is a distinct step in the direction of a higher civilization. It gives hope in the distant future of the end of militarism, with its stupendous, crushing burdens upon the working population of the leading countries of the Old World, and foreshadows a decisive check to the tendency toward tremendous expenditures for military purposes in the western hemisphere. It presages at least partial disarmament by governments that have been, and still are, piling up enormous debts for posterity to liquidate, and insures to multitudes of men now involuntarily doing service in armies and navies employment in peaceful, productive pursuits.

Perhaps some wars have contributed to the uplift of organized society; more often the benefits were utterly eclipsed by the ruthless waste and slaughter and suffering that followed. The principle of justice to the weak as well as to the strong is prevailing to an extent heretofore unknown to history. Rules of conduct which govern men in their relations to one another are being applied in an ever-increasing degree to nations. The battle-field as a place of settlement of disputes is gradually yielding to arbitral courts of justice. The interests of the great masses are not being sacrificed, as in former times, to the selfishness, ambitions, and aggrandizement of sovereigns, or to the intrigues of statesmen unwilling to surrender their scepter of power. Religious wars happily are specters of a medieval or ancient past, and the Christian Church is laboring valiantly to fulfil its destiny of "Peace on earth."

If the United States has a mission, besides developing the principles of the brotherhood of man into a living, palpable force, it seems to me that it is to blaze the way to universal arbitration among the nations, and bring them into more complete amity than ever before existed. It is known to the world that we do not covet the territory of our neighbors, or seek the acquisition of lands on other continents. We are free of such foreign entanglements as frequently conduce to embarrassing complications, and the efforts we make in behalf of international peace can not be regarded with a suspicion of ulterior motives. The spirit of justice governs our relations with other countries, and therefore we are specially qualified to set a pace for the rest of the world.

The principle and scope of international arbitration, as exemplified in the treaties recently negotiated by the United States with Great Britain and France, should commend itself to the American people. These treaties go a step beyond any similar instruments which have received the sanction of the United States, or the two foreign Powers specified. They enlarge the field of arbitrable subjects embraced in the treaties ratified by the three governments in 1908. They lift into the realm of discussion and hearing, before some kind of a tribunal, many of the causes of war which have made history such a sickening chronicle of ravage and cruelty, bloodshed and desolation.

After years of patient endeavor by men of various nations, and despite many obstacles and discouragements, there has been established at The Hague a Permanent Court of Arbitration, to which contending governments may submit certain classes of controversies for adjudication. This court has already justified its creation and existence by the settlement of contentions which in other days led to disastrous wars, and even in this enlightened age might have precipitated serious ruptures. The United States Government, as represented by the National Administration, is ready to utilize this method of settling international disputes to a greater extent than ever before. That is, we are willing to refer to this tribunal, or a similar one, questions which heretofore have been left entirely to diplomatic negotiation.

The treaties go further by providing for the creation of a Joint High Commission, to which shall be referred, for impartial and conscientious investigation, any controversy between this Government, on one hand, and Great Britain or France, on the other hand, before such a controversy has been submitted to an arbitral body from which there is no appeal.

And, assuming that governments, like individuals, do not always display, while a dispute is in progress, that calmness of judgment and equipoise which are so consistent with righteous deportment, provision is made for the passion to subside and the blood to cool, by deferring the reference of such controversy to the Joint High Commission for one year. This affords an opportunity for diplomatic adjustment without an appeal to the commission.

The plan of submission to a joint high commission, composed of three citizens or subjects of one party and the same number of another, is a concession to the fear of being too tightly bound to an adverse decision made manifest in the objections of the Senate committee, because it may well be supposed that two out of three citizens or subjects of one party would not decide that an issue was arbitrable under the treaty against the contention of their own country unless it were reasonably clear that the issue was justiciable under the first clause of the treaty.

Ultimately, I hope, we shall come to submit our quarrels to an international arbitral court that will have power finally to decide upon the limits of its own jurisdiction, and in which the form of procedure by the complaining country shall be fixed, and the obligations of the country complained of, to answer in a form prescribed, shall be recognized and definite, and the judgment shall be either acquiesced in, or enforced. These treaties are a substantial step, but a step only, in that direction, and the feature of the binding character of the decision of the Joint High Commission as to the arbitral character of the question is the most distinctive advance in the right direction. Do not let us give up this feature without using every legitimate effort to retain it.

An understanding of the term _justiciable_ may be essential to a full comprehension of the significance and scope of these treaties. Questions involving boundary lines, the rights of fishermen in waters bordering upon countries with contiguous territory, the use of water-power, the erection of structures on frontiers, outrages upon aliens, are examples of justiciable subjects, and these are made susceptible of adjudication and decision under these treaties. It is now proposed to establish a permanent method of disposing of such questions without preliminary quarrels and menaces whose result may never be foreseen.

Certain questions of governmental or traditional policy are by their very nature excluded from the consideration of the Joint High Commission, or even the Permanent Court of Arbitration at The Hague. Such specific exemptions it is not necessary to set forth in the treaties. Objection has been made that under the first section of the pending pacts it might be claimed that we would be called upon to submit to arbitration of the Monroe Doctrine, or our right to exclude foreign peoples from our shores, or the question of the validity of southern bonds issued in reconstruction days.

The Monroe Doctrine is not a justiciable question, but one of purely governmental policy which we have followed for nearly a century, and in which the countries of Europe have generally acquiesced. With respect to the exclusion of immigrants, it is a principle of international law that every country may admit only those whom it chooses. This is a subject of domestic policy in which no foreign country can interfere unless it is covered by a treaty, and then it may become properly a matter of treaty construction.

With reference to the right to involve the United States in a controversy over the obligation of certain Southern States to pay bonds issued during reconstruction, which have been repudiated, it is sufficient to say that the pending treaties affect only cases hereafter arising, and the cases of the Southern bonds all arose years ago.

After a time, if our treaties stand the test of experience and prove useful, it is probable that all the greatest Powers on earth will come under obligation to arbitrate their differences with other nations. Naturally, the smaller nations will do likewise, and then universal arbitration will be more of an actuality than an altruistic dream.

The evil of war, and what follows in its train, I need not dwell upon. We could not have a higher object than the adoption of any proper and honorable means which would lessen the chance of armed conflicts. Men endure great physical hardships in camp and on the battle-field. In our Civil War the death-roll in the Union Army alone reached the appalling aggregate of 359,000. But the suffering and perils of the men in the field, distressing as they are to contemplate, are slight in comparison with the woes and anguish of the women who are left behind. The hope that husband, brother, father, son may be spared the tragic end which all soldiers risk, when they respond to their country's call, buoys them up in their privations and heart-breaking loneliness. But theirs is the deepest pain, for the most poignant suffering is mental rather than physical. No pension compensates for the loss of husband, son, or father. The glory of death in battle does not feed the orphaned children, nor does the pomp and circumstance of war clothe them. The voice of the women of America should speak for peace.

TRAGEDY OF THE "TITANIC"

THE SPEED CRAZE AND ITS OUTCOME A.D. 1912

WILLIAM INGLIS

No other disaster at sea has ever resulted in such loss of human life as did the sinking of the _Titanic_ on the night of April 15, 1912. Moreover, no other disaster has ever included among its victims so many people of high position and repute and real value to the world. The _Titanic_ was on her first voyage, and this voyage had served to draw together many notables. She was advertised as the largest steamer in the world and as the safest; she was called "unsinkable." The ocean thus struck its blow at no mean victim, but at the ship supposedly the queen of all ships.

Through the might of the great tragedy, man was taught two lessons. One was against boastfulness. He has not yet conquered nature; his "unsinkable" masterpiece was torn apart like cardboard and plunged to the bottom. The other and more solemn teaching was against the speed mania, which seems more and more to have possessed mankind. His autos, his railroads, even his fragile flying-machines, have been keyed up for record speed. The _Titanic_ was racing for a record when she perished.

Her loss has created almost a revolution in ocean traffic. "Let us go more slowly!" was the cry. Safety became the chief advertisement of the big ship lines; and speed, Speed the adored, shriveled into the dishonored god of a moment's madness.

The wreck of the steamship _Titanic_, of the White Star Line, the newest and biggest and presumably the safest ship in the world, is the greatest marine disaster known in the history of ocean traffic. She ran into an iceberg off the Banks of Newfoundland at 11.40 Sunday night, April 14th, and at twenty minutes past two sank in two miles of ocean depth. More than fifteen hundred lives were lost and a few more than seven hundred saved.

The _Titanic_ was a marvel of size and luxury. Her length was 882-1/2 feet--far exceeding the height of the tallest buildings in the world--her breadth of beam was 92 feet, and her depth from topmost deck to keel was 94 feet. She was of 45,000 tons register and 66,000 tons displacement. Her structure was the last word in size, speed, and luxury at sea. Her interior was like that of some huge hotel, with wide stairways and heavy balustrades, with elevators running up and down the height of nine decks out of her twelve; with swimming-pools, Turkish baths, saloons, and music-rooms, and a little golf-course on the highest deck. Her master was Capt. E. J. Smith, a veteran of more than thirty years' able and faithful service in the company's ships, whose only mishap had occurred when the giant _Olympic_, under his command, collided with the British cruiser _Hawke_ in the Solent last September. He was exonerated because the great suction exerted by the _Olympic_ in a narrow channel inevitably drew the two vessels together.

There were over 2,200 people aboard the _Titanic_ when she left Southampton on Wednesday for her maiden voyage--325 first-cabin passengers, 285 second-cabin, 710 steerage, and a crew of 899. Among that ship's company were many men and women of prominence in the arts, the professions, and in business. Colonel John Jacob Astor and his bride, who was Miss Madeleine Force, were among them; also Major Archibald Butt, military aide to President Taft; Charles M. Hays, president of the Grand Trunk Pacific Railroad, with his family; William T. Stead, of the London _Review of Reviews_; Benjamin Guggenheim, of the celebrated mining family; G. D. Widener, of Philadelphia; F. D. Millet, the noted artist; Mr. and Mrs. Isidor Straus; J. Thayer, vice-president of the Pennsylvania Railroad; J. Bruce Ismay, chairman of the White Star Line's board of directors; Henry B. Harris, theatrical manager; Colonel Washington Roebling, the engineer; Jacques Futrelle, the novelist; and Henry Sleeper Harper, a grandson of Joseph Wesley Harper, one of the founders of the house of Harper & Brothers.

As the _Titanic_ was leaving her pier at Southampton there came a sound like the booming of artillery. The passengers thronging to the rail saw the steamship _New York_ slowly drawing near. The movement of the _Titanic's_ gigantic body had sucked the water away from the quay so violently that the seven stout hawsers mooring the _New York_ to her pier snapped like rotten twine, and she bore down on the giant ship stern first and helpless. The _Titanic_ reversed her engines, and tugs plucked the _New York_ away barely in time to avoid a bad smash. If any old sailors regarded this accident as an evil omen, there is little reason to think the thing affected the spirits of the passengers on the great floating hotel. As the ship passed the time of day by wireless with her distant neighbors out of sight beyond the horizon of the ocean lanes, she reported good weather, machinery working smoothly, all going well.

For some reason the great fleet of icebergs which drifts south of Cape Race every summer moved down unusually early this year. The _Carmania_, three days in advance of the _Titanic_, ran into the ice-field on Thursday. The ship at reduced speed dodged about, avoiding enormous bergs along her course, while far away on every hand glinted the shining high white sides of many more of the menacing ice mountains. Passengers photographed the brilliant monsters. The steamship _Niagara_, many leagues astern, reported a slight collision, with no great harm done. That was enough. Captain Dow retraced his course to the northeast and, after an hour's steaming, laid a new course for Fire Island buoy. The presence of the great bergs and accompanying masses of field-ice so very early in the season was most unusual.

Into this desolate waste of sea came the _Titanic_ on Sunday evening. She encountered fog, for the region is almost continuously swathed in the mists raised by the contact of the Arctic current with the warm waters of the Gulf Stream. Scattered far and wide in every direction were many icebergs, shrouded in gray, invisible to the eyes of the sharpest lookouts, lying in wait for their prey.

Not only were the bergs invisible to the keenest eyes, but the sudden drop in the temperature of the ocean which ordinarily is the warning of the nearness of a berg was now of no avail; for there were so many of the bergs and so widely scattered that the temperature of the sea was uniformly cold. Moreover, the submarine bell, which gives warning to navigators of the neighborhood of shoal water, does not signify the approach of icebergs. The newest ocean giant was in deadly peril, though probably few of her passengers guessed it, so reassuring are the huge bulk, the skilful construction, the watertight compartments, the able captain and crew, to the mind of the landsman. Dinner was long past, and many of the passengers doubtless turned to thoughts of supper after hours of talk or music or cards; for there were not many promenading the cold, foggy decks of the onrushing steamship.

The _Titanic_ was about eight hundred miles to the southeastward of Halifax, three hundred and fifty miles southeast of treacherous Cape Race, when her great body dashed, glancing, against an enormous berg. The discipline and good order for which British captains and British sailors have long been noted prevailed in this crisis; for it is proven by the fact that the rescued were nearly all women and children.

From that rich, rushing, gay, floating world, with its saloons and baths and music-rooms and elevators, now suddenly shattered into darkness, only one utterance came. Phillips, the wireless operator, seized his key and telegraphed in every direction the call "S O S!" Gossiping among telegraphers hundreds of miles apart, messages of business import, all the scores of things that fill the ocean air with tremulous whisperings of etheric waves, began to give over their chattering. Again and again Phillips repeated the letters which spell disaster until the air for a thousand miles around was electrically silent. Then he sent his message:

"Have struck an iceberg; badly damaged; rush aid; steamship _Titanic_; 41.46 N., 50.14 W."

There was no other ship in sight. Far as the eye could reach no spot of light broke the gray darkness; yet other ships could hear and read the cry for help, and, wheeling in their courses, they drove full speed ahead for the wreck. The _Baltic_, two hundred miles to the eastward, bound for Europe, turned back to the rescue; the _Olympic_, still farther away, hastened to the aid of her sister ship; the _Cincinnati, Prince Adelbert, Amerika,_ the _Prinz Friederich Wilhelm_, and many others, abandoned all else to fly to help those in danger. Nearest of all was the _Carpathia_, bound from New York for Mediterranean ports, only sixty miles away. And as they all, with forced draft and every possible device for adding to speed, dashed through the misty night on their errand of mercy, Phillips, of the _Titanic_, kept wafting from his key the story of disaster. The thing he repeated oftenest was: "Badly damaged. Rush aid." Now and then he gave the ship's position in latitude and longitude as nearly as it could be estimated by her officers as she was carried southward by the current that runs swiftly in this northern sea, so that the rescuers could keep their prows accurately pointed toward the wreck. Soon he began to announce, "We are down by the head and sinking rapidly." About one o'clock in the morning the last words from Phillips rippled through the heavy air, "We are almost gone."

The crew were summoned to their stations; the lifeboats and liferafts were swiftly provisioned and furnished with water as well as could be done. Yet this provision could hardly have been very extensive, since it has long been an accepted axiom of the sea that the modern giant ships are indestructible, or at least unsinkable.

"Women and children first," the order long enforced among all decent men who use the sea, was the word passed from man to man as the boats were filled, the boatfalls rattled, and the frail little cockleshells were lowered into the calm sea. What farewells there were on those dark and reeking decks between husbands and wives and all other men and women of the same family one can hardly dare think about. Steadily the work of filling the boats and lowering away went on until the last frail craft had been dropped upon the ocean from the sides of the liner and the whole little fleet rose and fell on the sea beside the great black hulk. And when the last crowded boat had come down and there was no possibility of removing one more human being from the wreck, there were still more than fifteen hundred men on her decks. So far had belief in the invulnerability of the modern ship curtailed sane and proper provision for taking care of her people in time of calamity.

One can imagine with what frantic but impotent hope, as the sinking decks and menacing plash of waters within told of the imminent last plunge, those thousands of eyes strained at the misty wall of grayish black that enclosed them on every hand. Not one gleam of light in any quarter. The last horrible gurglings within the waterlogged shell of steel that a little while before had been the proudest ship of all the seas told unmistakably that the end was at hand. Down by the head went the giant _Titanic_ at twenty minutes past two o'clock on Monday morning, April 15th. And she took fifteen hundred people with her.

Four hours passed before the shivering people in the small boats heard the siren whistle that announced the approach of a steamship from the south. There was a heavy fog and they could not see one hundred fathoms off over the clashing and grinding ice that floated in fields on every side. Soon after seven o'clock in the morning the ship came in sight and presently hove to among the fleet of boats and liferafts--the steamship _Carpathia_, out of New York on April 11th for Mediterranean ports. She began at once to take aboard the survivors, and in a few hours had every boat hoisted aboard. The _Olympic_ and _Baltic_, learning by wireless that the rescues had all been effected, proceeded on their way.

The _Virginian_ and the _Parisian_, which arrived at the scene of the disaster a few hours later, could find no sign of any living person afloat, though they cruised for a long time among the wreckage before standing away on their courses. The _Carpathia_ at first was headed for Halifax, but upon learning by wireless that that harbor was ice-bound, Mr. J. Bruce Ismay, chairman of the Board of Directors of the White Star Line, suggested that the ship head for New York. This was done. The _Carpathia_, with nine hundred passengers of her own and the seven hundred survivors, reached New York in safety.

The sad international tragedy of the sinking of the _Titanic_ touched men's souls more deeply than any other disaster in many years. To English-speaking races in particular the horror of the occasion pressed close home; for here was the best of British ships bearing many of the most prominent of America's people. To these seasoned voyagers, crossing the Atlantic had become a mere pleasant trifle, seeming no more dangerous than an afternoon's shopping in town. Then suddenly there was thrust upon all of them that ancient, awful knowledge that "in the midst of life we are in death."

Both American passengers and English crew lived up to the best traditions of their race. There was no panic, no fighting for places in the boats on the doomed ship. On the contrary, people refused to believe in the imminence of danger. The idea that the ship was unsinkable had been so borne in on them that even when summoned upon deck and ordered to put on life-belts, many of them refused. In the first boats gotten away from the ship, there were not many people. Some refused to climb down through the deep blackness into the tiny craft. They thought the tumult all an empty scare that would soon pass.

When the steady, ominous settling of the huge ship's bulk broke through this shallow confidence, there was a solemn change. Grand and tender scenes there were on those sinking decks; of husbands and wives parting with the utterance of a hope, turned suddenly to terror, that they would soon meet again; of other wives who refused to leave their husbands and deliberately stayed to share their fate. Few of the more noted passengers were among those saved. Bruce Ismay, director of the steamship line, was one. The captain went down with his ship, as did most of his officers, though some of the latter saved themselves by clinging to the wreckage which rose after the vessel's plunge. While she was sinking her band still played "Nearer, my God, to thee," and other earnest hymns. Death did not find the old Saxon stock cringing from him with hysteria and frenzy. Sudden as was his coming, wholly unexpected as was his hideous visage, he was met with the calm courage which is the best tradition of the race.

And what have been the consequences of this overwhelming tragedy? An investigation was immediately begun in America by the United States Government. Another, slower, dignified and ponderous, was afterward undertaken by the British Government. Both of them in the end attributed the disaster to practically the same cause, the speed mania which has overtaken the nations, the heedlessness of man's over-confidence which takes risks so many times successfully that it grows to forget that risks exist.

The _Titanic's_ captain wanted to make a record on her maiden voyage. His directors wanted him to make a record. That would mean increased advertisement and increased traffic for their line. So in the face of danger, knowing there were icebergs all around him, the captain rushed his ship blindly ahead. The chance of his actually hitting an iceberg was scarce one in a hundred. So he took the chance. The probability that if he did strike an iceberg it could do irreparable damage to his stout ship, was scarce one in a hundred. So he took that chance also. He gambled with Death, as a thousand speed-driven captains had gambled before. This time it was Death's turn to win.

A gamble even more reprehensible was that of the steamship companies, who had grown so sure their ships would not sink that they no longer provided sufficient means of escape from them. Why load a vessel down with useless life-boats, which only hung the year in and year out, blocking up space? Every foot of that space was valuable. It might make room for an extra passenger, or provide an extra amusement to draw traffic. What voyager ever counted life-boats, or worked out the awful calculation, so obvious now, that there was only rescue space provided for one-third of the number of souls aboard? Was not the ship "unsinkable" after all?

The _Titanic_ is gone. Our sorrow for her is becoming but a memory. Our ships carry lifeboats sufficient now; they are compelled to by law. And our sea captains run on safer lines; that, too, the law has made compulsory. But it will be long before man's overweening self-confidence rises from the shock which has been given to his belief in his mechanical ability. Nature is not conquered yet. Ocean has still a strength beyond ours. Ships are not unsinkable; and Death will still take his toll of bold men's lives in the future as he has done in the past. We know that cowardice costs more than courage, but it is not so tragically costly as blind foolhardiness.

OUR PROGRESSING KNOWLEDGE OF LIFE SURGERY PERPETUATES THE BODY'S ORGANS

A.D. 1912

GENEVIEVE GRANDCOURT Prof. R. LEGENDRE

Several years ago a wealthy Swedish manufacturer of dynamite left, by his will, a fund for the providing of a large prize to be conferred each year upon the person who has accomplished most for the peaceful progress of mankind. This annual sum of forty thousand dollars, which is called from its donor the "Nobel prize," was, in October, 1912, conferred upon a surgeon, Dr. Alexis Carrel, for his remarkable work in the study of the life of the tissues and organs which exist in the human body.

Even before this public recognition of his work, Dr. Carrel had in the summer of 1912 created a furor among the savants of Paris by the announcement of what he had accomplished. Carrel, though a native-born Frenchman, is an American by education and citizenship, and the French were at first inclined to challenge the value of his work. We therefore present here a "popular" scientific account of what he had achieved, reprinted by permission from the _Scientific American_. Then comes the grudging approval of Professor Legendre, the noted "Preparator of Zoology," head of that section in the National Museum of Paris.

Briefly stated, the impressive step which science has here taken, is the preservation of life in the heart and other organs so that these may be taken out of the body and yet kept alive for months. With smaller animals Carrel has even accomplished the actual transferrence of organs from one individual to another. As for the simpler bodily tissues, it now seems possible to preserve these indefinitely outside the body, not only alive but in excellent health and ready to reassume their functions in another body.

GENEVIEVE GRANDCOURT

THE "IMMORTALITY" OF TISSUES

A very evident disadvantage under which medical science has labored has been the impossibility of watching the chemical process set in motion by substances introduced into the body. For this reason various experimenters, from time to time, have attempted to "grow tissues" artificially, in such manner that their development, functions, and decay--under both healthy and diseased conditions--might be studied under the microscope. The only way in which this could be done would be to take a piece of living tissue from the body, and cause its cells to multiply; tissue being made up of an aggregation of cells.

Science has failed to produce a single living cell, that is, a cell which will undergo the process of nuclear division (growth) which is the prime condition of its being; and it seemed equally impossible to cause a cell already living to undergo the same process if deprived of the circulation of the blood. Therefore, when in 1910 it was announced that Dr. Alexis Carrel with his assistant, Dr. M. T. Burrows, had succeeded, scientific credulity was taxed. A well-known French savant expressed the opinion before the Society of Biology in Paris, that as others experimenting along these lines, had witnessed only degeneration and survival of cells, this phenomenon was all Carrel's discovery amounted to. In view of past experience, indeed, the chances were in favor of a mistake. In 1897, Leo Loeb said that he had produced this artificial growth both within and without the body. Obviously, such development within the organism where the process of utilizing the body-fluids, etc., follows the same course as in nature, takes on the character of grafting rather than of cultivating in a culture medium. As to causing the external growth, it was ten years later before it seems first to have succeeded. In 1907 Harrison, from Johns Hopkins University, furnished details of his research in such form as to be convincing. But his work had reference to the growth of tissues only of coldblooded animals, he having cultivated artificially, nerve fibers from the central nervous system of the frog.

Carrel's work consisted in extending Harrison's method to apply to warm-blooded animals, including, of course, mammals; he having primarily in view at this time a more precise knowledge of the laws governing the restoration of tissues, for example, after serious surgical wounds. He and his assistant worked steadily to this end, and succeeded. The tissues of the higher animals, including man, can now be developed in a culture, and such development can be made to correspond to a rigidly precise technique. The feat is accomplished by putting minute pieces of living tissue into a plasmatic (blood) medium which will coagulate. So complicated is this apparently simple matter in its application that only the most exquisite surgical skill is proof against incalculable modifications in results.

Having obtained evidence that tissue can be cultivated in accordance with a formula that may be relied upon to give definite results, the effort was made to grow artificially the various malignant (cancerous) tissues, in turn, of chicken, rat, dog, and human being. Cancerous tissue invariably developed cancer, and so rapidly and extensively that the growth could be observed with the naked eye.

It now became evident that, under the right circumstances, the artificial growth of tissues could be utilized in the study of many problems; such as malignant growth of tissue; certain problems in immunity, as, for example, the production of antitoxins of certain organisms; the regulation of the growth of the organism, or of different parts of the organism; rejuvenation and senility; and the character of the internal secretions of the glands, such as the thyroid which plays a role most important in physical and mental development. The difficulty lay in the fact that the artificial growth was so very short-lived. It was found that by passing the growth into a new medium, and repeating the process, the tissues would begin to grow again; but their life even under these circumstances was limited at the most to twenty days. This was manifestly too short a time in which to study the fundamental questions to which the researchers had addressed themselves. Thereupon, study was taken up to determine the question as to _what made these tissues die_. It was found that, apparently as incidental to growth, there was the process of decay, due to an _inability of the tissues to eliminate waste products._

On January 17, 1912, experiments were commenced to determine whether these effects could be overcome. The observations were on the heart and blood-vessels, artificially grown, of the chicken fetus. These growths were put into a salt solution for a few minutes at different periods of their growth, and then placed in a new plasmatic medium. It was found that by following this method, the tissues could be made to live indefinitely. When an animal is in the early stages of its development, the growth of its tissues is necessarily greater as it matures, there being steady diminution after a certain age until the growth altogether ceases, and the size of the animal is determined. But it was found by subjecting these artificial growths to washings in salt solution that the mass was _fifteen times greater at the end of than at the commencement of the third month, showing that they do not grow old at all!_ In the artificial growth the problem of senility and death is solved.

It was the announcement of this "permanent life of tissues" that caused such a furor in Paris last summer, and several eminent scientists to demand ocular demonstration, because "the discovery, if true, constituted the greatest scientific advance of a generation."

The following summary of this interesting and vitally important and epoch-making work of Carrel is translated from an article published in Paris recently by Professor Pozzi, who witnessed the experiments:

"Carrel found that the pulsations of a fragment of heart, which had diminished in number and intensity _or ceased_, could be revived to the normal state by a washing and a passage. In a secondary culture, two fragments of heart, separated by a free space, beat as strongly and regularly. The larger fragment contracted 92 times a minute and the smaller 120 times. For three days, the number and intensity of the pulsations varied slightly. On the fourth day, the pulsations diminished considerably in intensity. The large fragment beat 40 times a minute and the little fragment 90 times. The culture was washed and placed in a new medium. An hour and a half after, the pulsations had become very strong. The large fragment contracted 120 times a minute and the small fragment 160 times. At the same time the fragments grew rapidly. At the end of eight hours they were united and formed a mass of which all the parts beat synchronically."

Experiments to date seem to establish that the connective tissue, at any rate, is "immortal."

From this research, it is possible to arrive at certain logical conclusions, which, however, it remains for the future to confirm. One, and the most important, is that the normal circulation of the blood does not succeed in freeing all the waste products of the tissues, and that this is the cause of senility and death. Were science to find some way to wash the tissues in the living organism as they have been washed in these cultures, man's life might be indefinitely prolonged.

R. LEGENDRE

The Nobel prize in medicine for 1912 has just been awarded to Dr. Alexis Carrel, a Frenchman, of Lyon, now employed at the Rockefeller Institute of New York, for his entire work relating to the suture of vessels and the transplantation of organs.

The remarkable results obtained in these fields by various experimenters, of whom Carrel is most widely known, and also the wonderful applications made of them by certain surgeons have already been widely published.

The journals have frequently spoken lately of "cultures" of tissues detached from the organism to which they belonged; and some of them, exaggerating the results already obtained, have stated that it is now possible to make living tissues grow and increase when so detached.

Having given these subjects much study I wish to state here what has already been done and what we may hope to accomplish. As a matter of fact we do not yet know how to construct living cells; the forms obtained with mineral substances by Errera, Stephane Leduc, and others, have only a remote resemblance to those of life; neither do we know how to prevent death; but yet it is interesting to know that it is possible to prolong for some time the life of organs, tissues, and cells after they have been removed from the organism.

The idea of preserving the life of greater or lesser parts of an organism occurred at about the same time to a number of persons, and though the ends in view have been quite different, the investigations have led to essentially similar results. The surgeons who for a long time have transplanted various organs and grafted different tissues, bits of skin among others, have sought to prolong the period during which the grafts may be preserved alive from the time they are taken from the parent individual until they are implanted either upon the same subject or upon another. The physiologists have attempted to isolate certain organs and preserve them alive for some time in order to simplify their experiments by suppressing the complex action of the nervous system and of glands which often render difficult a proper interpretation of the experiments. The cytologists have tried to preserve cells alive outside the organism in more simple and well-defined conditions. These various efforts have already given, as we shall see, very excellent results both as regards the theoretical knowledge of vital phenomena and for the practise of surgery.

It has been possible to preserve for more or less time many organs in a living condition when detached from the organism. The organ first tried and which has been most frequently and completely investigated is the heart. This is because of its resistance to any arrest of the circulation and also because its survival is easily shown by its contractility. In man the heart has been seen to beat spontaneously and completely 25 minutes after a legal decapitation (Renard and Loye, 1887), and by massage of the organ its beating may be restored after it has been arrested for 40 minutes (Rehn, 1909). By irrigation of the heart and especially of its coronary vessels the period of revival may be much prolonged.

The first experiments with artificial circulation in the isolated heart were made in Ludwig's laboratory, but they were limited to the frog and the inferior vertebrates. Since then experiments on the survival of the heart have multiplied and become classic. Artificial circulation has kept the heart of man contracting normally for 20 hours (Kuliabko, 1902), that of the monkey for 54 hours (Hering, 1903), that of the rabbit for 5 days (Kuliabko, 1902), etc. It has also enabled us to study the influence upon the heart of physical factors, such as temperature, isotonia; chemical factors, such as various salts and the different ions; and even complex pharmaceutical products. Kuliabko (1902) was even able to note contractions in the heart of a rabbit that had been kept in cold storage for 18 hours, and in the heart of a cat similarly kept after 24 hours. The other muscular organs have naturally been investigated in a manner analogous to that which has been used for the heart; and for the same reason, because it can be readily seen whether or not they are alive. The striated muscles survive for quite a long time after removal, especially if they are preserved at the temperature of the body and care is taken to prevent their drying. By this method many investigations have been made of muscular contractions in isolated muscles. Landois has noted that the muscles of a man may be made to contract two hours and a half after removal, those of the frog and the tortoise 10 days after. Recently Burrows (1911) has noted a slight increase in the myotomes of the embryo chick after they have been kept for 2 to 6 days in coagulated plasma.