Current Mention

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Mar 26, 1908

— Train wreckers derailed a fast train on the Illinois Central near Springfield, Ill., March 21, but fortunately no one was injured.

— Acting upon the request presented to President Roosevelt more than a year ago by an Episcopal bishop in the Philippines, that something be done to prevent the increase of the opium habit in the islands, the State Department sent a circular letter to all the powers, asking an international conference. All the European nations, as well as China and Japan, have accepted the American invitation.

— About 2,000 students of the Michigan University were in a riot at Ann Arbor, March 16. The efforts of the dean of the university, the mayor of the city, the police, and the fire departments were equally unavailing in dispersing the mob. The trouble started in a theater, which a student had previously been forced to leave. Eighteen of the leaders were arrested, and the damage to the theater was about $2,500.

— Four of the fourteen men charged with conspiracy to defraud the State of Pennsylvania, by exacting overpayment in connection with furnishing the new Capitol building, have recently been found guilty. The men convicted are the contractor, and the former officers, auditor general, State treasurer, and superintendent of buildings and grounds. Each case has been appealed, and the men are at liberty on bail.

— On account of the threatening letters received by many men who had intended to raise a tobacco crop, and the continued demonstrations by the night riders, these farmers now announce that they will not risk growing a crop. At Maysville, Ky., representatives of the American Tobacco Company on March 16 placed a Gatling gun on the roof of the warehouse, which they threaten to use if the night riders appear. Near Carlyle, Ky., in the early hours of the morning of March 21 the night riders shot and killed an independent planter.

— Following the ill-timed attempt to overthrow the Haytian government a few weeks since, there has been some ill feeling on the part of the government toward the nations of Europe because they refused to deliver to the Haytian authorities such persons as had taken refuge in the consulates. The matter seemed about settled that they should be allowed to leave the country, when, in the early hours of the morning of March 15, eleven men were summarily taken from their beds to the cemetery, and there shot by the orders of the government, for being implicated in a revolutionary plot. The discovery was made by intercepting a letter from the leader of the former outbreak, General Firmin, who had taken refuge in the French consulate at Gonaives. Port au Prince suffered a reign of terror for two or three days, and many foreigners took refuge in the consulates. English, German, French, and American war-vessels were hurried to the scene from near-by waters, and quiet is again restored, although the affair is not entirely settled. General Firmin and other refugees left Gonaives on a French cruiser March 21.