East Africa had never stopped building its public opinion system. Ernst had a deep understanding of the power of public opinion warfare, so even during the worst periods of the East African economy, it had never ceased infiltrating Western public opinion systems.
The Titanic was indeed an opportunity for a public opinion battle. As an outright "man-made disaster," Britain, the country that built and operated the ship, used public opinion to wash its hands clean of all responsibility for the Titanic. American media, meanwhile, was responsible for stirring things up, portraying the Americans aboard the ship, or the American vessels involved in the rescue, through the lens of tragedy and heroism.
In truth, the sinking of the Titanic was absolutely not as "beautiful" as British and American media described it. But mainstream British and American media would only select statements favorable to their own countries for publication, and could even fabricate news to muddle the waters.
For example, the Brooklyn Eagle of the United States reported on April 19, 1912: "The only blot was that at the bottom of one lifeboat that left the Titanic, two dead Far East Empire coolies and eight living men were found crammed beneath the seats... These men... had rushed into the lifeboat at the very first sign of danger."
Such false reports were too numerous to count, and they were not cleared up until the twenty-first century. For instance, Tim Martin, a scholar who studied the history of the Titanic, said there was no evidence whatsoever that rumors of Chinese survivors disguising themselves or hiding had ever truly occurred. Since the public at the time believed that only women and children ought to be saved, he believed these were all stories "invented afterward by the media and the public."
But by the time these