News and Miscellany

The Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Dec 18, 1866

News and Miscellany.

Can ye not discern the signs of the times? Matt. xvi, 3.

Europe.

From voluminous correspondence we make the following summary of affairs in Europe, our dates by mail being November 27:

All Europe Arousing.—A London correspondent writes: Whatever may be the cause, all Europe is arming and preparing for a great struggle. Russia has made a levy en masse, proclaimed a new emancipation in Poland, and is making and importing war material, and pushing on its railway system with great energy. Austria is using every effort to cement the empire and re-organize the army, so as to have a peace establishment of 600,000 men and a war complement of 900,000, armed with the Remington breech-loader, and improved artillery. France has increased the annual conscription and reserves, and the Chassepot breech-loader is probably to be superseded by the new gun of Mr. Bonin, which fires twenty-five balls a minute, while the Emperor himself has invented a breech-loading four-pounder, the lightest, most rapid, and most effective field-piece ever made. The entire cavalry, armed with this piece, will act as flying artillery, and needle-guns will be held out of range for any effective use. Of course Prussia will do her utmost to keep her present vantage. She has just bought one of the finest iron-clads in England, built for the Sultan. Others are supposed to be building here and in America. Whatever dullness there may be in other manufactures, ships of war, arms and powder, are in lively demand.—Detroit Post.

Prussia.—The impression is now prevailing in many minds that, while Prussia is making all the show of a tolerably generous peace with her enemies and with some of her neighbors, she is only laying her plans all the deeper, not only to annex the old Hanse cities of Lubeck, Hamburg, and Bremen, as she has Frankfort-on-the-Main, but to absorb Saxony, Bavaria, and every other territorial slice that the claws of her black eagle are strong enough to clutch. 'What can't be done to-day can be done to-morrow; she aims at nothing less than all Germany,' said an intelligent citizen of Stuttgart the other day, and he was more than half right. But Russia and France would have something to say before such a result is gained.—European Correspondent of the Methodist.

The Austrian Government has decided upon adopting the English Remington rifle, which, like the needle gun, loads at the breech. The result of the experiments has been that sixty shots per minute can be fired with this rifle.

Twenty-six iron-clad vessels are now being built in England for the British navy.