What is the first demand of romance in a shipwreck? It is the cry of Women and Children First. No male creature is to step into a boat as long as there is a woman or child on the doomed ship. How the boat is to be navigated and rowed by babies and women occupied in holding the babies is not mentioned. Second romantic demand. Though all the men must be heroes (except the foreigners, who must all be shot by stern British officers in attempting to rush the boats over the bodies of the women and children), the Captain must be a superhero, a magnificent seaman, cool, brave, delighting in death and danger, and a living guarantee that the wreck was nobody’s fault, but, on the contrary, a triumph of British navigation. Third romantic demand. The officers must be calm, proud, steady, unmoved in the intervals of shooting the terrified foreigners. Fourth romantic demand. Everybody must face death without a tremor; and the band, according to the Birkenhead precedent, must play “Nearer, my God, to Thee”. —George Bernard Shaw, on the sinking of the Titanic (via Ripening Reason)
Posted on: Thu, 20 Jun 2013 19:28:46 +0000
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