There is something very moving in the end of a great vessel.  It is so hard to believe that a thing of such vast bulk, and with organs of such terrific power, should be so utterly helpless because of a mere hole in her side.  It is like watching the death of a god.  We make such a turmoil about the end of our puny lives, and that great giant slides away into darkness without a murmur.  Ah, but you will say, a man is of far more value than a ship.  Is he?  Is any single man in this world worth as much as the Titanic?  And if so, how?  He can make wealth, but so could she.  He could bring happiness to others, and so could she.  I have yet to find any ground on which any man can be put up in competition with that vessel in sheer worth to the world, and I am not speaking in any low sense of values.  For I suppose the greatest man who ever lived might feel that his life was well spent if he had brought two continents nearer together.  It was for that that she was created.  The hard fact is that there are very few indeed of us, in spite of all the noise we make, who are worth to the world a thousand pounds, and if she could sell the bulk of us for that she would be positively drunk with fortune.

But, you will say, a ship has no soul.  Are you quite so sure about that?  Most people will maintain that their bodies contain a soul, and then they proceed to build up these same bodies with bread and bacon, and even beer, and in the end they possess bodies constructed without any shadow of doubt out of these ingredients.  And if ten thousand men have toiled night and day, in blazing furnace and in dark mine, to build a mighty vessel, at the cost of years of labour, at the cost of pain and death, is not that vessel a part of them as much as their poor bodies, and do not their souls live in it as much as in their flesh and blood?  We speak of the resurrection of the Body, and superior people smile at an idea so out-of-date and unscientific.  To me the body is not mere flesh and blood, it is the whole complex of all that a man has thought and lived and done, and when it arises there will arise with it all that he has toiled for on earth, all that he has gained, and all that he has created by the sweat of his brow and the hunger of his soul.  The world is not the dust-heap of the centuries, but only their storehouse.

It was late when we reached Furnes after a freezing drive in the dark, but all our thoughts were overshadowed by the tragedy we had seen.  We felt that we had been present at the burial of a god.

XXI.  The Ambulance Corps