George
Bernard Shaw vs. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
Below is a series of “Letters to the Editor,” written
by George Bernard Shaw and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, which were published in the
"Daily News and Leader" in May 1912.
I came across this correspondence in a biography called "Conan
Doyle," by Hesketh Pearson, 1997. Any mistakes in the typing or phrasing of
what follows are entirely mine.
This touches on the Californian incident only
tangentially. The first letter, from
G.B Shaw, appeared in print on the same day that the British investigators
heard the Californian testimony, so whatever Shaw knew most likely came from
accounts from coverage of the
To provide the context for Shaw's outburst, it is May
14th - a month to the day after the Titanic disaster. The facts of the case are just now being
brought out by
But by May 14, the Mersey Inquiry has met for seven
days, and piece by piece a detailed - and more accurate - picture of the disaster
is slowly being put before the public's eyes.
Among the revelations are the actual statistics by gender and class of
the saved vs. the lost; two-thirds of steerage children drowned; the lack of
binoculars for the lookouts; the high rate of speed; the warnings of ice ahead;
foreigners attempting to rush boat 14; the refusal of lifeboats to return to
pick up swimmers in the water. Joseph Scarrot has told of hundreds of corpses in the water amid
masses of wreckage: his was the only lifeboat to go back and help.
The exchange between Shaw and Doyle begins with a
letter to the editor of the "Daily News and Leader" from George
Bernard Shaw:
First Letter: GB SHAW
May 14th
SOME
UNMENTIONED MORALS
Why is it that the effect of a sensational catastrophe
on a modern nation is to cast it into transports, not of weeping, not of
prayer, not of sympathy with the bereaved nor congratulation of the rescued,
not of poetic expression of the soul purified by pity and terror, but of a wild
defiance of inexorable Fate and undeniable Fact by an explosion of outrageous
romantic lying?
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. The likelihood that no sensible woman would
trust either herself or her child in a boat unless there was
a considerable percentage of men on board is not considered. Women and Children First: that is the
romantic formula. And never did the
chorus of solemn delight at the strict observance of this formula by the British
heroes on board the Titanic rise to more sublime strains than in the papers
containing the first account of the wreck by a surviving eye-witness, Lady Duff
Gordon. She described how she escaped in
the captain's boat. There was one other
woman in it, and ten men: twelve all told.
One woman for every five men. Chorus: "Not once or twice in our rough
island history," etc. etc.
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.
Such a man Captain Smith was enthusiastically
proclaimed on the day when it was reported (and actually believed, apparently)
that he had shot himself on the bridge, or shot the first officer, or been shot
by the first officer, or shot anyhow, to bring the curtain down
effectively. Writers who had never heard
of Captain Smith to that hour wrote of him as they would hardly write of
Nelson. The one thing positively known
was that Captain Smith had lost his ship by deliberately and knowingly steaming
into an icefield at the highest speed he had coal for. He paid the penalty; so did most of those for
whose lives he was responsible. Had he
brought them and the ship safely to land, nobody would have taken the smallest
notice of him.
Third romantic demand. The officers
must be calm, proud, steady, unmoved in the intervals of shooting the terrified
foreigners. The verdict that they had
surpassed all expectations was unanimous.
The actual evidence was that Mr. Ismay was
told by the officer of his boat to go to hell.
Boats which were not full refused to go to the rescue of those who were
struggling in the water in cork jackets.
Reason frankly given: they were
afraid. That fear was as natural as the
officer's language to Mr. Ismay: who of us at home
dare blame them or feel sure that we should have been any cooler or braver?
But is it necessary to assure the world that only
Englishmen could have behaved so heroically, and to compare their conduct with
the hypothetical dastardliness which lascars or Italians or foreigners
generally - say Nansen or Amundsen
or the Duke of Abruzzi - would have shown in the same circumstances?
Fourth romantic demand. Everybody must
face death without a tremor; and the band, according to the
I ask, what is the use of all this ghastly,
blasphemous, inhuman, braggartly
lying? Here is a calamity which might
well make the proudest man humble, and the wildest joker serious. It makes us vainglorious, insolent and
mendacious. At all events, that is what
our journalists assumed. Were they right
or wrong? Did the press represent the
public? I am afraid it did. Churchmen and statesmen took much the same
tone. The effect on me was one of
profound disgust, almost of national dishonor.
Am I mad? Possibly. At all events, that is how I felt and how I
feel about it. It seems to me that when
deeply moved, men should speak the truth.
The English nation appears to take precisely the contrary view. Again I am in the minority. What will be the end of it? for
(Note, the Duff Gordons have not yet returned from
"Put aside all the stories of false pathos and ignoble action,
and there still remains a star!
Throw out all the dross into the slag-heap, and there still emerges
a nugget of shining ore!"
On May 16th, reader R.B. Cunninghame
Graham wrote to agree with Bernard Shaw, calling Spender's letter unfair. Four days later, on May 20th, Conan Doyle's
protesting letter appeared.
Following is Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's reply in the
"Daily News and Leader:"
Second Letter: Sir AC DOYLE
May 20th
"Sir -
I have just been reading the article by Mr. Bernard
Shaw upon the loss of the Titanic, which appeared in your issue of May
14th. It is written professedly in the
interests of truth, and accuses everyone around him of lying. Yet I can never remember any production which
contained so much that was false within the same compass. How a man could write with such looseness and
levity of such an event at such a time passes all comprehension. Let us take a few of the points. Mr. Shaw wishes - in order to support his
perverse thesis, that there was no heroism - to quote figures to show that the
women were not given priority in escape.
He picks out therefore, one single boat, the smallest of all, which was
launched and directed under peculiar circumstances, which are now matter for
inquiry. Because there were ten men and
two women in this boat, therefore, there was no heroism or chivalry, and all
talk about it is affectation. Yet Mr.
Shaw knows as well as I know that if he had taken the very next boat he would
have been obliged to admit that there were 65 women out of 70 occupants, and
that in nearly all the boats navigation was made difficult by the want of men
to do the rowing. Therefore, in order to
give a false impression, he has deliberately singled out one boat; although he
could not but be aware that it entirely misrepresented the general
situation. Is this decent controversy,
and has the writer any cause to accuse his contemporaries of misstatement?
His next paragraph is devoted to the attempt to
besmirch the conduct of Captain Smith.
He does it by his favorite method of "Suggestio
falsi" - the false suggestion being that the
sympathy shown by the public for Capt. Smith took the shape of condoning Capt.
Smith's navigation. Now everyone -
including Mr. Bernard Shaw - knows perfectly well that no defense has ever been
made of the risk which was run, and that the sympathy was at the spectacle of
an old and honored sailor who has made one terrible mistake, and who
deliberately gave his life in reparation, discarding his lifebelt, working to
the last for those whom he had unwillingly injured, and finally swimming with a
child to a boat into which he himself refused to enter. This is the fact, and Mr. Shaw's assertion
that the wreck was hailed as a "triumph of British navigation" only
shows - what surely needed no showing - that a phrase stands for more than
truth with Mr. Shaw. The same remark
applies to his "wrote of him as they would hardly write of
Nelson." If Mr. Shaw will show me
the work of any responsible journalist in which Capt. Smith is written of in
terms of Nelson, I will gladly send 100 pounds to the Fabian Society.
Mr. Shaw's next suggestion - all the more poisonous
because it is not put into so many words - is that the officers did not do
their duty. If his vague words mean
anything, they can only mean this. He
quotes as if it were a crime the words of Lowe to Mr. Ismay
when he interfered with his boat. I could
not imagine a finer example of an officer doing his duty than that a
subordinate should dare to speak thus to the managing director of the Line when
he thought he was impeding his life-saving work. The sixth officer went down with the Captain,
so I presume that even Mr. Shaw could not ask him to do more. Of the other officers I have never heard or
read any cause for criticism. Mr. Shaw
finds some cause for offense in the fact that one of them discharged his
revolver in order to intimidate some foreign emigrants who threatened to rush
the boats. The fact and the assertion
that these passengers were foreigners came from several eye-witnesses. Does Mr. Shaw think it should have been
suppressed? If not, what is he scolding
about? Finally, Mr. Shaw tries to defile
the beautiful incident of the band by alleging that it was the result of orders
issued to avert panic. But if it were,
how does that detract either from the wisdom of the orders or from the heroism
of the musicians? It was right to avert
panic, and it was wonderful that men could be found to do it in such a way.
As to the general accusation that the occasion has
been used for the glorification of British qualities, we should indeed be a
lost people if we did not honor courage and discipline when we see it in its
highest form. That our sympathies extend beyond ourselves is shown by the fact
that the conduct of the American male millionaires has been warmly eulogized as
any single feature in the whole wonderful epic.
But surely it is a pitiful sight to see a man of undoubted genius using
his gifts in order to misrepresent and decry his own people, regardless of the
fact that his words must add to the grief of those who have already had more
than enough to bear."
One comment before the next round. Note Doyle's use of
the phrase: "the whole wonderful epic." What he does not realize is that he has just
provided proof for Shaw's lament that his fellow Britishers
are glorifying a horrific - and needless - tragedy. As for the "beautiful incident of the band," it
was about this time, mid-May, that Joseph Conrad, in a separate publication,
offered his observation that it would have been much finer "if the band
had been quietly saved rather than drowned, playing - whatever tune they were playing,
poor devils. There is nothing heroic
about being drowned against your will..."
Third Letter: GB SHAW
"Sir -
I hope to persuade my friend Sir Arthur Conan Doyle,
now that he has got his romantic and warm-hearted protest off his chest, to read
my article again three or four times, and give you his second thoughts on the
matter; for it really is not possible for any sane man to disagree with a
single word that I have written.
I again submit that when news of a shipwreck arrives
without particulars, and journalists immediately begin to invent particulars,
they are lying. It is nothing to the
point that authentic news may arrive later on, and may confirm a scrap or two
of their more obvious surmises. The
first narratives which reached us were those by an occupant of a boat in which
there were ten men, two women, and plenty of room for more, and of an occupant
of another boat which, like the first, refused to return to rescue the drowning
because the people in it were avowedly afraid.
It was in the face of that information, and of that alone, that columns
of raving about Women and Children First were published. Sir Arthur says that I "picked out"
these boats to prove my case. Of course
I did. I wanted to prove my case. They did prove it. They do prove it. My case is that our journalists wrote without
the slightest regard to the facts; that they were actually more enthusiastic in
their praise of the Titanic heroes on the day when the only evidence was of
conduct for which a soldier would be shot and a Navy sailor hanged than when
later news came in of those officers and crews who did their best; and that it
must be evident to every reasonable man that if there had not been a redeeming
feature in the whole case, exactly the same "hogwash" (as Mr. Cunninghame Graham calls it in his righteous disgust) would
have been lavished on the veriest dastards as upon a
crew of Grace Darlings. The Captain
positively lost popularity
when the deliberate and calumnious lie that he had shot himself
was dropped. May I ask what value real
heroism has in a country which responds to these inept romances invented by a
people who can produce nothing after all but stories of sensational cowardice? Would Sir Arthur take a medal from the hands
of the imbecile liars whom he is defending?
Sir Arthur accuses me of lying; and I must say that he
gives me no great encouragement to tell the truth. But he proceeds to tell, against himself,
what I take to be the most thundering lie ever sent to a printer by a human
author. He first says that I
"quoted as if it were a crime" the words used by an officer who told
Mr. Ismay to go to hell. I did not.
I said the outburst was very natural, though not in my opinion admirable
or heroic. If I am wrong, then I may claim to be a hero
myself; for it has occurred to me in trying circumstances to lose my head and
temper and use the exact words attributed (by himself) to the officer in
question. But Sir Arthur goes on say:
"I could not imagine a finer example of an officer doing his duty than
that a subordinate should dare to speak thus to the managing director of the
Line when he thought he was interfering with his life-saving work." Yes you could, Sir Arthur, and many a page of
heroic romance from your hand attests that you often have imagined finer
examples. Heroism has not quite come to
that yet; nor has your imagination contracted or your brain softened to the
bathos of seeing sublimity in a worried officer telling even a managing director
(godlike being!) to go to hell. I would
not hear your enemy libel you so. But
now that you have chivalrously libeled yourself, don't lecture me for mindless
mendacity; for you have captured the record in the amazing sentence I have just
quoted.
I will not accept Sir Arthur's offer of 100 pounds to
the Fabian Society for every hyper-Nelsonic eulogy of
the late Captain Smith which stands in the newspapers of those first days to
bear out my very moderate description of them.
I want to see the Fabian Society solvent, but not at the cost of utter
destitution to a friend. I should not
have run the risk of adding to the distress of Captain Smith's family by adding
one word to the facts that speak only too plainly for themselves if others had
been equally considerate. But if
vociferous journalists will persist in glorifying the barrister whose clients
are hanged, the physician whose patients die, the general who loses battles, and the captain whose ship goes to the bottom, such
false coin must be nailed to the counter at any cost. There have been British captains who have
brought their ships safely through icefields by doing
their plain duty and carrying out their instructions. There have been British captains who have
seen to it that their crews knew their boats and their places in their boats,
and who, when it became necessary to take to those boats, have kept discipline
in the face of death, and not lost one life that could have been saved. And often enough nobody has said "Thank
you" to them for it, because they have not done mischief enough to stir
the emotions of our romantic journalists.
These are the men whom I admire and with whom I prefer to sail.
I do not wish to imply that I for a moment believe
that the dead man actually uttered all the heartbreaking rubbish that has been
put into his mouth by fools and liars; nor am I forgetting that a captain may
not be able to make himself heard and felt everywhere in these huge floating
(or sinking) hotels as he can in a cruiser, or rally a mob of waiters and dock
laborers as he could a crew of trained seamen.
But no excuse, however good, can turn a failure into a success. Sir Arthur cannot be ignorant of what would
happen had the Titanic been a King's ship, or of what the court-martial would
have said and done on the evidence of the last few days. Owing to the fact that
a member of my family was engaged in the Atlantic service, and perhaps also
that I happen to know by personal experience what it is like to be face to face
with death in the sea, I know what the risk of ice means on a liner, and know
also that there is no heroism in being drowned when you cannot help it. The Captain of the Titanic did not, as Sir
Arthur thinks, make "a terrible mistake." He made no mistake. He knew perfectly well that ice is the only
risk that is considered deadly in his line of work, and, knowing it, he chanced
it and lost the hazard. Sentimental
idiots, with a break in the voice, tell me that "he went down to the
depths:" I
tell them, with the impatient contempt that they deserve, that so did the
cat. Heroism is extraordinarily fine
conduct resulting from extraordinarily high character. Extraordinary circumstances may call it forth
and may heighten its dramatic effect by pity and terror, by death and
destruction, by darkness and a waste of waters; but none of these accessories
are heroism itself; and to pretend that they are is to debase its moral
currency by substituting sensational misfortune for inspiring achievement.
I am no more insensible to the pity of the catastrophe
than anyone else; but I have been driven by an intolerable provocation of
disgusting and dishonorable nonsense to recall our journalists to their senses
by saying bluntly that the occasion has been disgraced by a callous outburst of
romantic lying. To this I now wish to
add that if, when I said this, I had read the evidence elicited by Lord
Mersey's inquiry as to the Californian and the Titanic's emergency boat, I
should probably have expressed myself much more strongly. I refrain now only because the facts are
defeating the hysterics without my help."
Below is Doyle's final reply to Shaw, and apparently the end
of the exchange. By now it was no longer
possible to extract much sentiment or romance from the stories of the
survivors, as the Inquiries had brought out the most gruesome facts on a daily
basis, and were ready to hear from Bruce Ismay
himself, before moving on to more technical matters. Three days after Shaw's last reply, Arthur Doyle closed
the discussion with what dignity he could on May 25th:
Fourth Letter: Sir AC DOYLE
"Sir -
Without continuing a controversy which must be
sterile, I would touch on only one point in Mr. Shaw's reply to my letter. He says that I accused him of lying. I have been guilty of no such breach of the
amenities of the discussion. The worst I
think or say of Mr. Shaw is that his many brilliant gifts do not include the
power of weighing evidence; nor has he that quality - call it good taste,
humanity, or what you will - which prevents a man from needlessly hurting the
feelings of others."
* * * * *
A final note: in
contrast to Doyle's assertion above that he was "guilty of no such
breach" as accusing Shaw of lying, go back and re-examine his first letter
(May 20th) , in which his exact words were that he "can never remember any
production which contained so much that was false...."
Sir Arthur’s biographer notes that the newspaper's readers
also glossed over this point, because "99% of them would rather have been
wrong with Conan Doyle than right with Bernard Shaw."