It would be absurd to pretend that these findings are
with- out value and importance merely because we know that the Chairman proved himself ignorant of nautical affairs. We fancy that his colleagues must have been largely respon- sible for the Report (which in several respects probably anticipates the Report of Lord Mersey), while Mr. Smith consoled himself with an oration in the Senate which for the genius of its fustian and turgidity almost recalled the Manner of the author of the " Great Defiance " in " Martin Chuzzlewit." It is very curious bow a taste for fantastic and vaporous rhetoric remains among a certain class of Americans. An Englishman could not be induced to talk like that; on the other hand it is equally true that he has not the peculiar imagination that would enable him to do it. The want of "proper discipline" among the crew was neither panic nor disorder, It was a want of cohesion which might have been remedied by the crew being longer together in the same ship, by practice at boat-drill, and by some system of policing the disaster.
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