Current Mention

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Mar 12, 1908

— A man and his wife in Chicago were recently sentenced to thirty and twenty-five years respectively in the penitentiary for kidnapping a little girl.

— The United States troops that have been in Goldfield, Nev., for three months left the camp March 7. The district is peaceful, as the strike has been practically declared off.

— Railroad engineers have completed plans for a $20,000,000 union transportation terminal, to be built at Van Ness Avenue and Market Street, San Francisco, Cal. All railroads, interurban lines, and subways will converge into the station.

— The originator of the tobacco growers’ pooling movement has issued a card to all tobacco growers of one section of Kentucky warning them of their probable fate if they disobey the ultimatum of the society which says that no crop shall be planted in 1908.

— Internal revenue collectors and agents have been furnished by the commissioner with a list of fifty-four preparations now being sold as medicines, which are in reality beverages. These will hereafter be subject to special tax, like other alcoholic beverages. This list does not comprise all ‘medicines’ which are subject to like taxation, but only such ones as have been analyzed by the department, and are found to contain but very little that is of a medicinal nature.

— February 29 King Manuel of Portugal issued a decree fixing March 5 as the date of the next general election, and another convoking the regular Cortes on April 29. At the same time decrees of the former Premier Franco in reference to the Cortes and the advances from the treasury to the royal house were revoked. These decrees of the new king have produced a good impression, but the final effect is still uncertain.

— During one week the papers have reported serious fires in school buildings in New York City, Philadelphia, Pa., Grand Rapids, Mich., and Cleveland, Ohio. The fire drill practised by the pupils of all these schools prevented any loss of life in each of the three first-mentioned cases. But a panic in attempting to escape from the building at North Collinwood, a suburb of Cleveland, resulted in the death of 171 children and two teachers, on March 4.

— The text of the new Kongo annexation treaty was submitted to the Belgian Parliament March 5. By its terms King Leopold proposes to abandon the crown domain and the crown foundation to Belgium, but the proposition requires that the state shall not only assume all the Kongo obligations, but shall continue the king’s usufruct in the Kongo revenues during his lifetime. It is generally thought that these terms make annexation of the Kongo to Belgium possible.

— Following an attack by an anarchist upon the chief of police of Chicago, on March 2, in which the would-be assassin was killed, Secretary Straus, of the Department of Commerce and Labor, issued orders to all immigration officials to consult the police in their respective jurisdictions with a view to ridding the country of alien anarchists and criminals whom the laws make it possible to deport. Since then threats of assassination have been made against the chief of police and a judge of Cincinnati; and the little town of Wawaka, Ind., is threatened with extermination if $750 is not sent to a certain place in New York City.

— There are certain causes of friction between China and Japan which give some students of world politics reason to think that ultimately a clash between these two governments is inevitable. Most prominent among these are the claim of Japan to certain islands at the mouth of the Yalu, the dispute over the timber district on the upper Yalu, and the effort of China to build railroads in Manchuria that would compete with the roads under Japanese control. At present there seems to be a crisis over still another affair. On February 7 Chinese officials seized the Japanese steamer ‘Tatsu Maru,’ suspected of smuggling arms and ammunition to Chinese insurgents. Although it has been impossible for China to prove that the cargo was either smuggled or intended for the insurgents, she has refused to release the ship, and Japan, after refusing the plan of arbitrating the differences proposed by China, has sent a practical ultimatum that unless her demands for restoration of the steamer and cargo and the payment of full indemnity are acceded to by China within a ‘reasonable time,’ she will take immediate action. Statesmen, however, incline to the belief that there will be no clash of arms at present.