The Ship That Did Not Make Land

 

There is something potent and enduring about the story of the Titanic. I think because it is the story of the shipwreck of European civilization. It is the foreshadowing in miniature of the First World War.

The Titanic was the supreme achievement of the technology of the day, vast and unsinkable. In a similar way, in 1914, Europe had a sense that progress was inevitable. The world had been tamed, and was all under Europe's civilizing wing. Since the Napoleonic period, there had been no really big wars. With increasing globalization and grand alliances, wars, and the causes for wars, seemed to be dying out. It was all clear sailing from here, as remaining evils like poverty, slavery, smallpox, and alcoholism were tackled in turn. Technology had conquered the seas, the skies, the land, the ether, even under the sea. 

And then it all hit an iceberg.

At first blow, like the Titanic, most probably felt there was surely nothing to worry about. The hull was built for this. There would be some demonstration of strength, and it would all be over by Christmas.

Instead, the ship went down, crowded with Kings and Queens and Grand Dukes.

The obvious moral is that of the Tower of Babel. The nations had grown too proud.

Unfortunately, we all seemed to take the opposite lesson: we blamed God as if it was His failure.