p. 19 | News and Miscellany

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Aug 26, 1915

News and Miscellany

Notes and clippings from the daily and weekly press

— A thousand addresses by more than a hundred lecturers and college professors, supplemented by literature for the promotion of a better understanding of international relations, have been arranged by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace as part of a nationwide campaign against war this summer. More than 1,600 Chautauqua platforms are to be the centers of lectures and debates on the subject, and it is estimated that the Chautauqua audiences will aggregate 4,000,000 persons.

— The seamen’s bill is causing much discussion everywhere. The lake passenger companies of Chicago, Detroit, Cleveland, and Buffalo are greatly stirred, and declare the bill “amounts to a prohibitive restriction in the operation of passenger boats, making no allowance for the lake boat, traveling in protected waters and in sight of land, as against the ocean-going liners that cruise from New York to Bombay.” A special session of Congress is urged upon President Wilson. Unless Congress changes several provisions of the bill, it is affirmed that low-fare passenger rates will be driven from the Great Lakes after November 1.

— New York University is to give a new degree—doctor of public health. It will crown a new course of study which is to be established in accordance with a proposal of the State public health council.

— Under the new civil commission in Kansas, in obedience to a rule established by Governor Capper, no man who takes a drink of liquor can work for the State. The rule will apply to about 3,000 men and women on the State’s pay roll.

— Florida and other sections of the tobacco belt are infested with a tiny but very active beetle, which has been responsible for losses of hundreds of thousands of dollars annually. In the government laboratory at Richmond, Va., one man is devoting his entire time to the study of methods of extermination.

— In the present European war, the mastery of typhoid fever is shown by the fact that practically no deaths have been caused by it. Inoculation, though not compulsory in the British Army, is all but universal, and has strikingly proved its value. Camp life has been remarkably free from contagious diseases, owing to the enforced cleanliness.

— The vodka shops (saloons) have been replaced by people’s palaces in Russia. In these palaces the people meet for entertainment and instruction. The work of carrying out this scheme is being pushed with much vigor by the government. The palaces contain reading rooms and halls where concerts, exhibitions, and other entertainments can be given.

— Under the powers conferred by the defense of the realm act, the British government recently by an order in council took over the control of the sale and supply of intoxicating liquors in many districts where war material is being handled. The districts affected include the cities of Bristol, Southampton, Cardiff, Liverpool, and adjacent towns, and most of the munition and shipbuilding centers in Yorkshire.

— A relief and exploration expedition is setting out from North Sydney, in Nova Scotia, for Crocker Land, in the arctic circle. The party expects to pick up the party under Donald B. MacMillan, last heard of in Crocker Land. The new expedition is under the direction of Dr. Edmund O. Hovey, chairman of the Crocker Land expedition committee, and will carry supplies for two years. The ship will bring back to New York such members of the MacMillan party as desire to come, as well as collections in Greenland for the American Museum of Natural History.

— Determined efforts are to be made by a faction of the Chippewa Indians of Minnesota to obtain from the next Congress the division and distribution among members of the tribe of the immense tribal fund now held in trust for the Indians. The distribution of the fund would, in the opinion of government authorities, mark the beginning of the end of Chippewa reservations in Minnesota, for it would do away with a fund of more than $4,100,000, the interest of which is now used in support of the school system and in paying for the expense of conducting the reservations.

— The Postal Telegraph-Cable Company has announced a reduction of fifty per cent in the rates for press night-leased wires. The cut means a saving of tens of thousands of dollars to newspapers and press associations of the United States, as about 75,000 miles of wire will be affected. The Postal rate on present leased wires is $10 a year per mile.

— According to the Missionary Review of the World Korea’s multitudes are turning to Christianity at the rate of 3,000 conversions a week. There has been an average of one convert every hour since missionaries first went to that country, over twenty-five years ago. In these times, however, the average amounts to eighteen converts per hour.

— A recent cable dispatch states that all Italy has been aroused as the result of the publication of an interview with the Pope in which the Pontiff is said to have complained of the attitude of the Italian government, to have declared the censor was interfering with the Vatican’s mail, and to have expressed fear of a possible revolution in Italy. It is feared that as the Italian people are already doubtful of the loyalty of the Italian Catholic clergy, these expressed sentiments of Benedict XV may rouse the smoldering antitlerical spirit of the masses into a flame that will be hard to extinguish.