“The Son of God goes forth to war.”
Mrs. Roosevelt, on the other hand, named as her choice:
“Nearer, my God, to Thee;”
and also:
“Art thou weary, art thou laden,
Art thou sore distrest?
‘Come to Me,’ saith One, ‘and coming,
Be at rest.’”
“For the first time I realized that I had no favorite hymn,” said Captain Butt in a letter which he wrote to his mother that very night; and which, fortunately, has been preserved in “The Letters of Archie Butt.” He added: “I have thought of it during the day, and I believe that I shall take ‘Nearer, my God, to Thee,’ as my favorite. It appeals to the sentimental side of me at least.”
“I think I should like to have sung at my funeral, ‘Nearer, My God, to Thee,’” said Butt in this letter. Singularly enough, this was the last music which he heard played before he died. He was drowned when the Titanic sank; and the ship’s band, which had been playing popular music during the fateful period after the great ship had struck an iceberg on a Sunday night, rendered as its last selection, when the boat was going down and carrying hundreds of the passengers and crew to a swift death in the Atlantic: