Captain E.J. Smith, the commander of the Titanic, was a guest at a banquet which was being given by W. Bruce Ismay, managing director of the White Star Line, when the big steamer plunged into that fated iceberg, according to Robert M. Daniel, member of the banking firm of Hillard-Smith, Daniel & Co., 328 Chestnut street, Philadelphia.

  The fourth officer was in charge of the vessel, said Mr. Daniel, when seen at the Waldorf-Astoria in New York, to which hotel he went immediately after landing from the Carpathia, accompanied by his mother and younger brother, who had come up from their home in Virginia to meet him.

  "We were about fifty miles ahead of our schedule at the time the accident happened," said Mr. Daniel, "and were running at about a twenty-mile-an-hour rate. Everybody on board had been talking all along about how we were trying to beat the Olympic's record for the Western trip and many pools were made on each day's run.

  "I was asleep in my berth when the collision came and so cannot tell how we happened to hit that berg or what occurred immediately afterwards. I got up and looked out of my stateroom door; but all seemed to be quiet and I went back to bed again.

  "A little later I heard some one crying that the boats were being manned and I got frightened. So I wrapped an overcoat about me and went on deck. On the way I grabbed a life belt and tied it on.

  "The boat had already sunk so far down that the lower decks were awash. I didn't waste any time in thinking. I just jumped overboard. I clung to the same overturned lifeboat that young John B. Thayer, Jr., swam to later and saw him jump from the Titanic. It looked to me as though his father pushed him off and jumped after him, but the boat sank so soon afterwards and things were so mixed up that I couldn't be sure about that.

  "A boat came by after a while that was full of women. They were frightened and seeing me, pulled me aboard, saying they needed a man to take charge. I did my best to cheer them up, but it was a poor effort and didn't succeed very well. Still I kept them busy with one thing and another and so helped pass the weary hours until we were picked up by the Carpathia."

JUMPED AS THE LINER WAS GOING DOWN.

  Mr. Daniel stated with emphasis that Colonel John Jacob Astor stayed on the Titanic until the last second, then jumped just as the liner was going down, and he did not see the millionaire again.

  Captain Smith also stuck to the bridge, until the ship sank, said Mr. Daniel, when the skipper also jumped, but disappeared below the waves and apparently never came up again.

  "I spoke to the fourth officer just before I went to my cabin," said Mr. Daniel, "and he told me he was in charge while the captain was at dinner. Then I remembered I had heard Ismay was giving a banquet.

  "The fourth officer said the skipper was coming up 'pretty soon' to relieve him," added Mr. Daniel.

  On the Carpathia, Mr. Daniel said, were nineteen women who had been made widows by the Titanic disaster. Six of them were young brides who were returning on the steamship from honeymoon trips on the Continent. None of them, he said, was able to obtain from the passengers of the Carpathia mourning garb.

  While on the Carpathia Mr. Daniel proved of considerable assistance to the wireless operator. He is an amateur student of wireless telegraphy. Following the disaster the operator on the Carpathia was compelled to work night and day.

  While the operator was engaged in the arduous task of sending to shore the long list of those who had been snatched from the sea, Mr. Daniel went into the operating room. He found the operator on the verge of collapse, and, volunteering his services, sent a large part of the list himself.

  Mr. Daniel denied that all the lifeboats and collapsible rafts launched from the Titanic had been picked up by the Carpathia.

  "Only twelve boats were picked up," he said, "while there were half a dozen more that drifted away in other directions. There has been no storm, and I don't see why they should not have been located by some other vessel."

"FRANKFURT" MUCH NEARER THAN CARPATHIA.

  A German steamer, the "Frankfurt," was thirty-five miles nearer to the Titanic than was the Carpathia at the time of the accident, but for some reason would not come to the assistance of the stricken liner, Mr. Daniel said.

  Asked if any women had been left aboard the Titanic be said: "Only those women who positively refused to leave their husbands and who could not be forced into lifeboats for lack of time.

  "One of the most remarkable features of this horrible affair is the length of time that elapsed after the collision before the seriousness of the situation dawned on the passengers. The officers assured everybody that there was no danger, and we all had such confidence in the Titanic that it didn't occur to anybody that she might sink."

  As to the reports that many persons had been shot to prevent them from rushing the lifeboats, Mr. Daniel said several shots had been fired in the air to frighten the steerage passengers and keep them in order, but that he did not know or hear of anyone being hit by a bullet.

  Mrs. John Jacob Astor, said Mr. Daniel, had been confined to her stateroom under the doctor's care during her stay on the Carpathia. "I did not lay eyes on her nor on Bruce Ismay. He stuck close to his cabin and I don't think he came on deck once during the trip on the Carpathia."

  Even when the passengers finally realized that the Titanic was doomed, there was no disorder, according to Mr. Daniel. The crew's discipline was perfect and the women were placed in the boats quietly and without confusion. It was only after the ship had gone down, he added, and the women awoke to the fact that their husbands, brothers, sons and sweethearts, who had told them they would follow "in other boats," had sunk to their death, that there was any hysteria.

THE CRIES WERE HEART-RENDING.

  "Then the cries were awful to listen to; some of the women screamed all the time. For four straight hours they kept at it. First from one boat, then from another. It was heart-rending."

  Asked why the Carpathia had refused to answer the wireless messages relayed to her, Mr. Daniel answered that so many land stations were trying to get the vessel that the air was full of cross currents, and it was almost impossible to catch any one message meant for the rescue ship, let alone trying to reply to any of them.

  While Mr. Daniel was talking to the newspaper men on the pier, just after landing from the Carpathia, a man ran up and, showing him two newspaper photographs, asked if he remembered the face.

  "It's my brother, Mr. White, of California," said the man. "Is he on board the Carpathia?"

  "I don't think so," answered Mr. Daniel. "I remember meeting this gentleman on board the Titanic, but I have not seen him since." Mr. White's brother grabbed the photographs and rushed away.

  Many of the men, said Mr. Daniel, refused to jump from the Titanic until the ship was actually disappearing beneath the waves.

  "They seemed to think they were safer on board," he said, "and by waiting too long lost their chance of being saved for they were probably carried down by the suction. Howard B. Case, of New York, was one who declined to jump. C. Duane Williams was another. He was washed overboard, but his son, Richard Norris Williams, jumped and was saved."

  Mr. Daniel was in the water or on a cake of ice nearly an hour before he was pulled aboard a lifeboat. He had nothing to keep him from freezing save a light overcoat over his pajamas. While on the Carpathia he slept on the floor of the dining saloon and was so weak when he landed that he could hardly move.

  When in Philadelphia, Mr. Daniel makes his home at the Southern Club, though he is a native of Richmond, Va., where his mother and brother live.

CRAWLED ON TO CAKE OF ICE.

  "When I finally went on deck," said Mr. Daniel, "the water already was up to my ankles. I saw the women and some of the men taking to the boats. A short distance away was a big cake of ice. I jumped for it and crawled on it.

  "John B. Thayer, Jr., came to the same ice cake later, after the Titanic sank. Then a boat passed near and he swam to it and was pulled aboard. A half hour afterwards another boat came by and I was pulled aboard.

  "It seemed a long time before we saw the masts of the Carpathia, but when the straight masts and the blur of smoke from her funnels were outlined against the horizon, we realized that it meant rescue for all of us. When the boat finally reached us, the men in the boat did what they could to help the women to the vessel, but most of us were almost helpless from the cold and exposure.

  "I cannot pretend to explain the accident. All I can say is that we knew for five hours before the accident that there were ice fields about. I saw Colonel Astor after I was on the raft. He was still on deck. The water was washing about his knees. He made no effort to get into a boat.

  "The last I saw of Major Butt," Mr. Daniel added, "he was playing bridge whist with Clarence Moore, of Washington, formerly of Philadelphia, and widely known as a horse show exhibitor, and two other men. This was just before I went to my cabin.

  "When I came on deck again, I did not see him. I have no doubt he met his death as a soldier should."

  Major Archibald Butt, U.S.A., military aid to President Taft, who lost his life on the Titanic, met his death in a manner that fully justified the President's estimation of him as expressed in the eulogy given out at the White House, in which the President tenderly referred to his late aide as a man "gentle and considerate," and as one who was "every inch a soldier."

GRAVITY OF THE TITANIC'S CONDITION.

  From the moment the Titanic climbed to her death on the jagged shelf of the great iceberg until the last boatload of women and children, and some men, was lowered, Major Butt was to all intents and purposes an officer not only of the American Army, but of the British mercantile marine. He was among the first to realize the gravity of the Titanic's condition, and he immediately forgot self and went to the assistance of the sorely taxed skipper and junior officers of the sinking liner.

  From the moment that Captain Smith let it be known to his officers and a few of the men passengers that the Titanic was doomed, Major Butt was an officer of the Titanic. He was here and there and everywhere, giving words of encouragement to weeping women and children, and uttering when necessary commands to keep the weak-kneed men from giving in and rendering the awful situation even more terrible.

  That this was the manner in which Major Butt met death is certain.

  Captain Charles E. Crain, of the Twenty-seventh United States Infantry was a passenger on the Carpathia, and when he learned that Major Butt was among the dead, he made it his duty to get the true tale of his comrade's death.

  "Naturally," said Captain Crain, "I was deeply concerned in the fate of Major Butt, for he was not only a fellow-officer of the army, but also a personal friend of many years' standing. I questioned those of the survivors who were in a condition to talk, and from them I learned that Butt, when the Titanic struck, took his position with the officers and from the moment that the order to man the lifeboats was given until the last one was dropped into the sea, he aided in the maintenance of discipline and the placing of the women and children in the boats.

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.

MAJOR BUTT A MAN TO BE FEARED.

  "When the time came for it, he was a man to be feared. In one of the earlier boats fifty women, it seemed, were about to be lowered when a man, suddenly panic-stricken, ran to the stern of it. Major Butt shot one arm out, caught him by the neck and pulled him backward like a pillow. His head cracked against a rail and he was stunned.

  "'Sorry,' said Major Butt; 'women will be attended to first or I'll break every bone in your body.'

  "The boats were lowered away, one by one, and as I stood by my husband he said to me: 'Thank God for Archie Butt! Perhaps Major Butt heard it, for he turned his face toward us for a second.

  "Just at that time a young man was arguing to get into a lifeboat, and Butt had hold of the lad by the arm like a big brother and appeared to be telling him to keep his head.

  "I was one of three first cabin women in our collapsible boat, the rest were steerage people. Major Butt helped those poor frightened people so wonderfully, tenderly, and yet with such cool and manly firmness. He was a soldier to the last."

  "If anything should happen to me tell my wife in New York that I've done my best in doing my duty."

  This was the last message of Benjamin Guggenheim, of the famous banking family, dictated to a steward only a short while before the banker sank to his death with the Titanic.

  It was was not until several days later that the message was received by Mrs. Guggenheim.

  It was delivered by James Etches, assistant steward in the first cabin of the Titanic, to whom Mr. Guggenheim communicated it. Etches appeared at the St. Regis Hotel and inquired for Mrs. Benjamin Guggenheim. He said that he had a message from Benjamin Guggenheim, and that it had to be delivered in person.

  Mrs. Guggenheim was in the care of Daniel Guggenheim, whose apartments are at the St. Regis. The steward was admitted, but was not permitted to see Mrs. Guggenheim, who is prostrated with grief. He insisted that he must see her personally, but finally consented to transmit the message through her brother-in-law.

TOGETHER ALMOST TO THE END.

  "We were together almost to the end," said the steward. "I was saved. He went down with the ship. But that isn't what I want to tell Mrs. Guggenheim."

  "Then the steward produced a piece of paper. He had written the message on it, he said, to be certain that it would be correct. The message was as given.

  "That's all he said," added the steward, "there wasn't time for more."

  Little by little Mr. Guggenheim got the account of his brother's death from the steward. It was the first definite news that he had received of his brother.

  "Mr. Guggenheim was one of my charges," said the steward anew. "He had his secretary with him. His name was Giglio, I believe, an Armenian, about twenty-four years old. Both died like men.

  "When the crash came I awakened them and told them to get dressed. A few minutes later I went into their rooms and helped them to get ready. I put a life preserver on Mr. Guggenheim. He said it hurt him in the back. There was plenty of time and I took it off, adjusted it, and then put it on him again. It was all right this time.

  "They wanted to get out on deck with only a few clothes on, but I pulled a heavy sweater over Mr. Guggenheim's life belt, and then they both went out. They stayed together and I could see what they were doing. They were going from one lifeboat to another helping the women and children.

  "Mr. Guggenheim would shout out, 'Women first,' and he was of great assistance to the officers.

  "Things weren't so bad at first, but when I saw Mr. Guggenheim about three quarters of an hour after the crash there was great excitement. What surprised me was that both Mr. Guggenheim and his secretary were dressed in their evening clothes. They had deliberately taken off their sweaters, and as nearly as I can remember they wore no life belts at all.

  "'What's that for?' I asked.

  "'We've dressed up in our best,' replied Mr. Guggenheim, 'and are prepared to go down like gentlemen.' It was then he told me about the message to his wife and that is what I have come here for.

  "Well, shortly after the last few boats were lowered and I was ordered by the deck officer to man an oar, I waved good-bye to Mr. Guggenheim, and that was the last I saw of him and his secretary."