News and Miscellany

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Tacoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Mar 4, 1915

News and Miscellany

Notes and clippings from the daily and weekly press

— A State-wide prohibition bill was passed by the senate of the State of Utah recently, by a vote of fourteen to three. The prohibition forces are confident that the bill will also pass the house by a large majority.

— The greatest activity in shipbuilding in many years in this country is now under way. Every firm on the Atlantic seaboard has more orders than it can fill for new vessels, and the same activity is said to prevail on the Pacific coast.

— Reports from Petrograd state that the czar is planning to have the Russian nation change from the Gregorian calendar, which has long been used by both Russia and Greece, to the Julian calendar, which is used by the rest of the Christian world. The Gregorian calendar is thirteen days behind the Julian calendar.

— President Wilson recently sent to the House his message vetoing the immigration bill. His objections to the measure were that the literacy test provided for aliens desiring to enter the United States was not a fair test of prospective citizenship, and that the bill would prevent this government from granting asylum to political offenders, thus reversing a policy that had given the nation some of its most distinguished citizens. An attempt was made to pass the bill over the veto, but failed.

— It is reported from Namur that thousands of women, children, and aged men in those portions of northern France lying along the Meuse River, are facing starvation, with no hope of relief except the food that the American Commission for Relief in Belgium is sending south from Namur.

— American marines have been landed at Port au Prince, Haiti, from the four warships which are in the harbor there, according to information received from Cape Haitien, on February 19. The landing, it was said, followed the defeat of the Theodore forces at St. Marc, and the fact that the capital was menaced by the revolutionists under Gen. Vilbrun Guillaume.

— Fanny Crosby, blind poet, composer of more than 8,000 hymns, died at her home, in Bridgeport, Conn., February 12, at the age of ninety-four years. Since the days of Charles Wesley and Isaac Watts no other has contributed so extensively to hymnology as she. It is reported that the publishers of gospel songbooks a generation ago were forced to give her about 200 different pen names, so as to give variety to the authorship of their publications. Yet it was not until after she was forty years of age that Fanny Crosby began hymn writing. She was born in Putnam County, New York, March 24, 1820, and was married to Alexander Van Alstyne, a blind music teacher. At eight the child first displayed her talent in versification. Perhaps her most famous hymn is “Safe in the Arms of Jesus,” published in 1868.

— On the afternoon of February 20, President Wilson, from the White House in Washington, gave the signal for the official opening of the Panama-Pacific International Exposition. Three hundred thousand persons were admitted to the grounds the first day. Against the heavy handicaps of international war, the exposition has gone forward to completion, and foreign participation is much more extensive than was expected last summer. Great Britain, Germany, and Russia are not represented, except in commercial exhibits; but France, Austria-Hungary, and Japan are officially participating, in spite of the fact that they are engaged in war. Even Belgium has contributed a national exhibit, which happened to be at Lyons, France, when the war began. The American collier “Jason,” returning from Europe, is bringing exhibits from Greece, Austria-Hungary, Germany, Italy, France, Belgium, Spain, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Holland, and Great Britain, which will be conveyed direct through the Panama Canal to San Francisco. The exposition cost $50,000,000. Of this amount $12,500,000 was raised by the city of San Francisco. The State of California gave $5,000,000, and $2,500,000 was raised in the fifty-eight counties of the State. The foreign and State participation represents an outlay of $10,000,000, the amusement zone $10,000,000, while the outlay of individual exhibitors approximates another $10,000,000. Eight thousand individual exhibitors are represented at the fair. Forty-eight foreign nations occupy space in the fair zone, as well as forty-three of the States and Territories of the United States. The exposition consists of 250 buildings in three main groups lying in garden plots and sunken pools stretching for a half mile along the southern shore of San Francisco Bay.