This was no vengeance decreed for human shortcomings. It was superhuman, but not supernatural. It was but a manifestation of the unchangeable, irresistible forces of nature, governed by physical laws which are inexorable. Nature knows neither revenge nor pity. She does not select her victims, nor does she turn aside to save the good who may be in her path. As her concern is not with individuals, but with the race, so she is moved not by mercy, but by law.
To the limited vision of man, with his brief life, nature seems incredibly cruel and wasteful. Her teachings must be learned at fearful cost. Men will ask themselves what lessons are taught by this overwhelming sacrifice.
THE HELPLESSNESS OF MAN BEFORE NATURE
There is made plain, first, the utter powerlessness of man when he pits his strength against the full demonstration of the laws of nature. It is revealed, again, that there are forces which before all the might of human intellect remain unconquerable. The same grim lesson confronts the scientist whose babe is snatched from him by death; it confronts the millionaire who feels the chill of age creeping upon the frame that has upheld the finances of a nation and has made and unmade panics with the crooking of a finger.
THE KINSHIP OF HUMANITY
But there flows from such a catastrophe a brighter and better influence than this. With all its horror and shock, there comes inevitably a great joining of minds and hearts. The whole world feels the thrill of kinship and a common humanity. For the time being all conceptions of social caste and class distinction, the most unworthy thoughts of beings fashioned all in the image of their Maker, are leveled and forgotten. Indifference and selfishness disappear. Throughout the nation, throughout the world, there thrills the uplifting current of brotherhood, the consciousness that "we be of one blood."
Wherever civilization has exercised its beneficent influence upon the minds of men there is felt, for a little time at least, the sense that all humanity is one; that the strife of man against man and nation against nation is but a pitiful thing, and that we may better concern ourselves with trying to make the common lot brighter and so soften the rigors of the existence we all must face.
THE RESPONSIBILITY OF WEALTH
Specifically does not such an appalling event serve to awaken responsibility among the wealthy and powerful toward the poor and the weak? When all goes well, when there are no thunderous warnings such as this of the helplessness of man against the forces arrayed against him, the fortunate do not realize that for millions mere existence is a poignant struggle; that hunger and cold and disease prevail even when there are no ghastly floods to make them vivid and picturesque. We do not doubt that there are many who will be stirred by the shock of this dreadful story to a deeper and more sympathetic understanding with the conditions that surround them on every side.
INCENTIVE TO ENTERPRISE