AS COOL AS THE ICEBERG.
“Butt, I was told was as cool as the iceberg that had doomed the ship, and not once did he lose control of himself. In the presence of death he was the same gallant, courteous officer that the American people had learned to know so well as a result of his constant attendance upon President Taft. There was never any chance of Butt getting into any of those lifeboats.
“He knew his time was at hand, and he was ready to meet it as a man should, and I and all of the others who cherish his memory are glad that he faced the situation that way, which was the only possible way a man of his calibre could face it.”
Mrs. Henry B. Harris, of Washington, a survivor of the Titanic, said:
“I saw Major Butt just before they put me into a collapsible raft with ever so many women from the steerage. Mr Millet’s little smile, which played on his lips all through the voyage, had gone, but when I was put in the boat I saw him wave his hand to a woman in another boat.
“But, oh, this whole world should rise in praise of Major Butt. That man’s conduct will remain in my memory forever; the way he showed some of the other men how to behave when women and children were suffering that awful mental fear that came when we had to be huddled in those boats. Major Butt was near me, and I know very nearly everything he did.
“When the order to take to the boats came he became as one in supreme command. You would have thought he was at a White House Reception, so cool and calm was he. A dozen or so women became hysterical all at once as something connected with a lifeboat went wrong. Major Butt stepped to them and said: ‘Really you must not act like that; we are all going to see you through this thing.’
“He helped the sailors rearrange the rope or chain that had gone wrong and lifted some of the women in with gallantry. His was the manner we associate with the word aristocrat.