News and Miscellany

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Dec 7, 1911

News and Miscellany

Notes and clippings from the daily and weekly press

— The production of petroleum is said to be increasing in nearly all the great oil regions of the world.

— Jan. 12, 1912, has been fixed as the date of the new election for members of the German Imperial Reichstag.

— Ex-Sultan Abdul-Hamid’s jewels are to be sold this month in Paris. This is the first time, it is announced, that such a magnificent collection has ever come under the hammer.

— The Dutch Reformed Church of this country has a mission station at Bahrein in Arabia. Last year at this one point 1,100 Bibles were sold, nearly all of them in the Arabic language, and 93 per cent to Moslems.

— The Nicaraguan government has negotiated a temporary loan of $1,500,000 with a syndicate of American bankers, pending the final ratification of the Nicaraguan loan agreement convention, which is before the Senate.

— Hostile action against the present Turkish government is being contemplated by the military party in Turkey, who speak openly of violently expelling the men who exiled Abdul-Hamid and of trying to collect the real elements of the Ottoman empire instead of pleading for foreign intervention to prevent the empire from falling to pieces.

— A parade of the relatives and friends of the victims of the Triangle waist-factory fire disaster in New York City took place last week. It was intended as a protest against the conditions which made that tragedy possible, and which still exist in many places throughout the city.

— As an aftermath of the notorious Astor-Force marriage, the retirement from the ministry of the clergyman who performed the ceremony is announced. This action, which will have the emphatic indorsement of upholders of social purity, was the result of protests against the minister’s participation in the marriage, by his associates in the Congregational churches of Providence and by the public generally.

— About ten years ago the United States government sent back to China $13,000,000, money that had been set aside by the council of the nations as the amount of indemnity due this country on account of the “Boxer uprising.” The Chinese have put this fund to an extraordinary use. The income from it is to be devoted to the expense of educating young Chinese men in the universities of the United States. China is sending 100 students a year for five years, and thereafter for 29 years, 50 students. At the present time there are 800 Chinese students in this country.

— On December 1, an international conference assembled at The Hague having for the purpose of securing international cooperation in the regulation and restriction of the opium traffic.

— Two hundred forty uncut diamonds are in the New York custom-house, and this week will be delivered to Thomas F. Ryan, the first and the least expected fruits of his loan of millions in money to King Leopold in 1906 for the Kongo Free State concession.

— The latest court decision regarding the practise of Christian Science, recently rendered by a New York magistrate, holds that a man has the right to believe that he can heal by the methods of that cult, but not the right to practise such methods for hire.

— The cholera has not been checked in Italy. The official report of the government for last week was 1,635 cases and 555 deaths; and, as is well known, this does not represent the seriousness of the situation. The worst reports come from Naples, Genoa, and Palermo.

— There was recently exhibited at the Olympia of London the greatest ship anchor that has ever been constructed. It was forged for the new giant steamer “Olympic” of the White Star line, and weighs fifteen tons. Twelve horses were required to draw it from the station to the exposition.

— A recent despatch from Rome states: “Shortly the Pope will publish an encyclical against the practises of spiritism. This important document, emphatically condemning dabbling in unknown forces, which is getting to be more and more common, is being suggested by the Congregation of the Secret Inquisition, which recently placed on the Index Expurgatorius numerous books dealing with spiritism.”

— A decided reaction from the recent favorable attitude of Japan toward Christianity is noted by observers in that country. The attempt of Japanese socialists to assassinate the emperor gave a great impetus to this reaction. We are told that the Japanese officials, hitherto tolerant of all religions, and not long ago contemplating the adoption of Christianity as the national religion, are to-day doing all in their power to discredit it.

— Professors Winkle, of Berlin, and Hogarth, of London, in their excavations at Boghaz-Keul, Syria, have just come upon thirteen clay slabs which indicate that a game somewhat like baseball was played 4,000 years ago. These slabs picture a game being played by a team of Hittites, the catchers wearing a perforated mask made of the dried shell of a gourd. The umpire was King Subbi-Luliman, who reigned in the eighteenth century B. C., and the amphitheater was full of men and women carrying fans. On some smaller tablets were found the rules of the game, and in a stone casket a sample ball and bat of the period. The center of the former was a whittled-out ball from the end of a sturgeon’s nose, which has all the resilience of rubber, and this wound around with a thread of native grass, and covered with camel’s hide; the bat was like the cricket-stick of our times, and made of gopherwood.

— Mixed juries of men and women having been tried with varying success in several of the woman-suffrage States, California, the newest recruit, has called the first juries made up entirely of women.

— Thomas A. Edison, the noted inventor, recently unfolded before President Taft a plan for campaigning that would enable him to be seen and heard by all the nation’s voters without absenting himself for a day from business at the White House. All that would be necessary, Mr. Edison explained to the President, would be for a man to go before an audience, make a speech on any subject which he chose, and the talking motion-picture machine would reproduce to audiences all over the country every gesture of the speaker, every word of his speech, and every shout of the crowd about him.

— That the Indian is favored more highly in the United States than the Negro, is the complaint made by President Thirkield, of Howard University, in his annual report to the Secretary of the Interior. “While the appropriation for Indian schools last year, available, at most, for about one quarter of a million people, aggregated $1,430,000,” he says, “the total government appropriation looking to the training and equipment of a race of 10,000,000, on whom have been placed the duties and responsibilities of citizenship, was only about $100,000.” Dr. Thirkield asks for a congressional appropriation for an agricultural department of his institution, whose student enrolment last year represented 29 States and 11 foreign countries.

— The annual report of Royal E. Cabell, commissioner of internal revenue, just given out, makes several startling declarations. All records were broken in the past fiscal year in the production of alcoholic liquors. The smoking of opium is a wide-spread vice in this country, and opium “joints” exist in every city of considerable size. The double system of taxing oleomargarin is corrupting grocers, and gross frauds are being perpetrated on the butter-buying public. The internal revenue receipts last year were $322,526,299, the greatest in the history of the government. Corporations making returns under the new corporation tax law numbered 270,202, with an aggregate capital of $67,886,430,519. The aggregate net income to the stockholders was $3,360,250,642.

— The Italian government has denied a rumor that their fleet is about to blockade the Dardanelles, and as a consequence Italian newspapers are expressing discontent with a policy that limits the war to Tripolitania, and therefore can not injure Turkey in a vital part. The war is proving costly in both blood and money, and Italian enthusiasm is waning. A short time ago the Italian press was protesting vigorously against any form of interference from foreign powers, but its tone has changed. It is pointed out that Turkey is able to prolong the war only because Italy has confined hostilities to Africa, and the papers declare that Italy will be unable to maintain such an altruistic attitude indefinitely. Europe must intervene, they say, or Italy will be obliged to strike at more vital parts of the Turkish empire. It is to the interest of all the powers to avoid such a cataclysm as this action would precipitate in eastern Europe.

— District Attorney Charles S. Whitman, of New York, has begun a search for $42,000 hidden by the wrecker of the federal bank, in 1904. This sum was deposited under an assumed name in two safety-deposit vaults, where the money has remained since. The bank-wrecker went to prison, but kept his secret. He died in prison.

— Affairs in China are in great confusion. Neither the imperial authorities nor the rebels of various types are able to prevent acts of lawlessness, and cable despatches from Tientsin announce that Mr. Calhoun, the American Minister, has issued orders to all Americans in the interior to take up residence in the nearest treaty port. The nation seems to be breaking up into several factions, each of which wants to organize a republic of its own. The vast country south of the Yangtze River is irrevocably opposed to the Manchu rule, and yet there does not seem to be cohesion enough between the different sections for them to agree on any one thing. Several republics have already been proclaimed, but the people do not know how to proceed. One commentator says: “There is little hope of a general republic. The kingdom is too much like a building without good foundation. With poor means of defense, with no constitutional foundation and no political unity, it faces the dilemma of having either to try a general republic with poor material or to split into several antagonistic republics.” A strong, wise leader is the need just now; but with the present condition of panic and confusion, we know not what a day may bring forth.