John Bernard Walker

“ With the fleet of Great Britain eliminated as an element in the problem, it becomes possible for Germany, as I shall show you later, to achieve, through the instrumentality of her fleet, a feat of arms which, in a swift series of operations, shall restore our naval and military prestige in the eyes of the German people, demolish for all time the 'Monroe Doctrine,' and transfer from the shoulders of Germany to those of the United States of America the burden of the fifteen-billion-dollar indemnity, imposed upon us by the Treaty to which, only yesterday, we appended our signature. ”

“ In all the long record of disasters involving the loss of human life there is none which appeals so strongly to the imagination as those which have occurred upon the high seas, and among these the loss of the Titanic stands out preeminent as the most stupendous and heartrending tragedy of them all. ”

“ But competition is keen, dividends must be earned, and amid all the fret and fever of our modern life, memories, even of stupendous happenings, have but a brief life. Steamship routes, under the strong pressure of competition, will tend to edge northward on to the older and shorter sailing lines. Immunity from disaster will beget the old sangfroid; and with the near approach of the age of motor-driven ships, we may look for an increase in speed such as the old Atlantic has never witnessed, even in the years of fiercest contest for the blue ribbon of the seas. ”

“ The Socialists of Germany, working upon the minds of a defeated and discouraged people, are laying the blame for this disaster upon the shoulders of the very class which has made Germany what it is. We, it is, who have made the German Empire and given to it the only system of government which, bearing in mind the century-long training and peculiar temperament of its people, can maintain it intact amid the powerful and jealous nations of Europe, and carry it forward to the greater future that awaits it. ”

“ Enough has been said to prove that when the naval architect undertakes to build a hull that will be proof against the blow, not merely of one but of several of these terrific weapons, he has set himself a task that may well try his ingenuity to the utmost. Protection by heavy armour is out of the question. The weight would be prohibitive and, indeed, all the side armour that he can put upon the ship is needed at the water-line and above it, as a protection against the armour-piercing, high-explosive shells of the enemy. ”

“ There is every reason to believe that the celebrated firm who built the ship, renowned the world over for the high character of their work; the powerful company whose flag she carried; aye, and even her talented designer, who was the first to pronounce the Titanic a doomed vessel and went down with the ship, were united in the belief that the size of the Titanic and her construction were such that she was unsinkable by any of the ordinary accidents to which the transatlantic liner is liable. ”

“ Should the blow which Germany, in the hour of her dire need, is about to strike against the United States lead that great country to a realization of the necessity at all times for proper naval and military preparedness, the regret which I and Germany feel at having to break our friendly relations with a country with which we have always lived in perfect amity, will be tempered by the thought that, out of her temporary loss she will reap a future gain of inestimable benefit. ”

“ And then, as the great power stations fell beneath the salvos of the bombardment, and every wheel in New York's vast system of transportation ceased to turn, fear redoubled and frantic horror began again to crush the life out of that hope-abandoned mob. ”

“ Yet the fate of that ship and her precious freight of human life hung upon the mere chance of sighting an obstruction in time to avoid collision by a quick turn of the helm. The question of hitting or missing was one not of minutes but of seconds. A ship like this, nigh upon a thousand feet in length, makes a wide sweep in turning, even with the helm hard over. At 21 knots the Titanic covered over a third of a mile in a minute's time. Even with her engines reversed she would have surged ahead for a half mile or so before coming to a stop. ”

“ If, then, the shipbuilder has made such wonderful strides in the strength of his construction and in the development of engine power, is it not a strange anomaly that he should have so far failed in his attempt to provide against sinking through collision, as to be under the necessity of advertising the fact, by crowding the topmost deck with appliances for saving the lives of the passengers when the ship goes down? ”

“ As it was, she struck an underwater, projecting shelf of the iceberg, and ripped open 200 feet of her plating, from forward of the collision bulkhead to a few feet aft of the bulkhead separating boiler-rooms numbers 5 and 6. It was a death wound! How deeply the iceberg cut into the fabric of the ship will never be known. Probably the first incision was deep and wide, the damage, as the shelf of ice was ground down by contact with the framing and plating of the ship becoming less in area as successive compartments were ruptured. ”

“ Throughout the spring, summer, and winter of 1915, the titanic conflict, enlarged by the entry of over 3,000,000 troops of Italy and the Balkan States into the theater of operations, swayed to and fro across the blood-soaked soil of Europe, with a ferocity and slaughter which sickened even the most hardened veterans of the war. ”

“ The structural portions of a ship and its engine- and boiler-plant, being of metal, are proof against fire; but the stateroom partitions, the wooden floors and ceilings, the wainscoting, and the hundreds of tons of material used in decoration and general embellishment, to say nothing of the highly inflammable paint-work and varnish, constitute a mass of material, which, in the event of a serious fire, might turn the whole interior of a large passenger ship into one vast cauldron of flame. ”

“ From many a resort of crime and infamy, the gunman, the safe-cracker, and all the brood that hides from law and order streamed forth to gather in the spoil. The police, aye the whole ten thousand of them, swept off their feet by the wild terror of Manhattan's millions, were unable to co-operate for effective work. Crime had found its millennium. Into the jewelry stores, into the houses of the rich on Fifth Avenue and the West Side, a mob, armed and stopping at no crime of violence, broke its way, gathering into grip and handbag, or thrusting into pocket at each grasp, the ransom of a prince! ”

“ We shall reintroduce in all future passenger ships those simple and effective elements of safety—the double skin, the longitudinal bulkhead, and the watertight deck—which, were conspicuous in the Great Eastern, and which alone can render such a ship as the Titanic unsinkable. ”

“ The conditions attending the loss of the Titanic were so heartrending, and its appeal has been so world-wide, as to lead us to expect that the tragedy will be preëminently fruitful in those reforms which, as we have shown, usually follow a disaster of this magnitude. Had the ship been less notable and the toll of human life less terrible, the disaster might have failed to awaken that sense of distrust in present methods which is at the root of all thorough-going reform. ”

“ How comes it, then, that this noble vessel lies to-day at the bottom of the Atlantic in two thousand fathoms of water?
A review of the progress of those constructive arts which affect the safety of human life seems to show that it needs the spur of great disasters, such as this, to concentrate the attention of the engineer and the architect upon the all-important question of safety. More important than considerations of convenience, economy, speed of construction, or even revenue-earning capacity, are those of the value and sanctity of human life. ”

“ Not long thereafter was heard the tramp of marching men on the shore road, leading from Fort Hamilton, and in ten minutes' time the big ferryboat had backed away from the pier with 1,800 men aboard. The boat crossed the Narrows, and, the tide being at the flood, was enabled to push her nose up to the quarantine landing at Staten Island. But no sooner was she made fast than the shore line flashed with the rifle fire of the Wadsworth garrison, which had thrown out scouting parties in all directions in anticipation of attack. ”

“ But, perhaps, after all said and done, the greatest perils of high-speed ocean travel are to be found in that spirit of nautical sangfroid, or indifference to danger, which, as this disaster has proved, may in time begin to characterise the attitude even of so experienced a navigator as the late captain of the Titanic. ”

“ If we would make ocean travel safe we must make the ship, as far as possible, unsinkable. In other words, the naval architect must adopt that principle of construction, common in other lines of mechanical work, which has been aptly designated as "fool-proof." In the building of folly-proof ships, then (the term is here used in a modified sense and with not the least reflection upon that fine body of professional men whose duties lie on the bridge of our ocean liners) , is to be found the one sure protection against the perils of the sea. ”

“ Germany realizes and accepts the new conditions which have been brought about by the great war. For the future, the resources, energy, and skill of the German people will be directed less to naval and military achievements and more than ever to the upbuilding and enlargement of her internal industries, the multiplication of the ships of her merchant marine, and the greater extension of her trade and commerce in all the countries of the world. ”

“ Alsace and Lorraine have ever been a thorn in the side of Germany—the one impassable barrier to cordial relations with our great French neighbor, whose good will, as you well know, it has been my earnest endeavor to win. And as for our lost colonial possessions, I, as well as you, have long recognized that they were too widely scattered, too little coordinated, to carry much military value; moreover, as outlets for our expanding population, they have failed of their purpose. ”

“ Now, here is a practice which should be made compulsory in the construction of all passenger-carrying steamships. Only by filling a compartment with water is it possible to determine whether that compartment is watertight. To send an important ship to sea without testing her bulkheads is an invitation to disaster. The amount of water that may find its way through a newly-constructed bulkhead is something astonishing ”

“ A large proportion of the time and money which have been expended in the development of the instruments of naval warfare has been devoted to the design and construction of weapons, whose object is to sink the enemy by destroying the integrity of the submerged portion of the hull. Chief among these weapons are the ram, the torpedo, and the mine. There can be no question that the damage inflicted by the ram of a warship would be far greater, other things being equal, than that inflicted by the bow of a merchant ship. The ram is built especially for its purpose. ”

“ On yonder side of the Atlantic lies an undefended treasure land, fifty billions of whose one hundred and fifty billions of wealth are to be found on the seaboard, and within easy reach of an expeditionary force and the guns of a hostile fleet. ”

“ The safety line represents the depth to which a ship will sink when any two adjoining compartments are opened to the sea and therefore flooded. If the two forward compartments are flooded, for instance, the bow may sink with safety, until the water is only three one-hundredths of the depth of the ship, at the side, from the bulkhead deck. If two central compartments are flooded, the ship is supposed to settle with safety until the bulkhead deck at that point is only three one-hundredths of the depth of the side, at that place, above the water. ”

“ For many a decade, even in the era of the steamship, it was necessary, when heading into a heavy sea, to slow down the engines, maintaining only sufficient speed to give steerage way. To-day, so great are the weight and engine power that the giant steamship, if the captain is willing to risk some minor mishaps to her upper works, may be driven resistlessly along the appointed lines of travel regardless of wind and sea. ”

“ It would be an optimistic forecast for me to say that we could concentrate these 90,000 men at any point on the Atlantic Coast within thirty days of the declaration of war. And when the concentration had been made, the troops would be without properly trained artillery and cavalry organization, and without ammunition trains; they would be hastily organized and assembled for the first time in large bodies; they would be unprepared to act effectively as an army; and should these troops be defeated, the country would have back of them practically no reserve of men and supplies. ”