Current Mention

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Washington, D. C. · Aug 31, 1905

— An outbreak of cholera is reported at Manila, P. I.

— Costa Rica is in a ferment over the outcome of the recent presidential election, which was attended with serious riots and bloodshed.

— A severe earthquake shock was experienced in southern Illinois and some districts of Tennessee late in the evening of August 21.

— Mrs. Mary Mapes Dodge, editor-in-chief of St. Nicholas and writer of children’s stories, died at Onteora Park, in the Catskills, August 21.

— Venezuela has recently made large purchases of war supplies, in connection with which it is reported that President Castro has intimated a willingness to take up arms against the United States.

— From reports received from New Orleans it appears that the yellow fever epidemic is now under control in that city, but the disease is raging in the surrounding parishes. Isolated cases of the fever have been reported in several Northern States.

— The arrest of a French Algerian merchant in Morocco recently led to a demand by France for his release and the payment of damages, and this demand not having been complied with a French military force was at last reports preparing for an incursion into that country.

— According to St. Petersburg reports, the situation in the Baltic provinces of Russia is not improving. Several political murders have been reported. Official advices show that the disturbances are fostered and directed by a thoroughly organized social revolutionary committee, with headquarters at Riga, the emissaries of which defy the best efforts of the police.

— Reports from Portsmouth state that the hope of peace between Russia and Japan rests on the chance of Japan’s being willing to recede from her demand for an indemnity, the czar having given an absolute and final refusal to an indemnity payment. Japan’s proposition was to sell to Russia half of the island of Sakhalin at a price which would cover the cost of the war, and to surrender her claims to the interned Russian ships of war, and her demand for the limitation of Russian naval power in the Pacific, on condition that Russia accepted the proposition concerning Sakhalin. This the czar has refused to accept, and the outlook for peace is therefore greatly darkened, though the conference is to be prolonged into the coming week. A significant fact of the situation, however, is that Russia is unable to raise money to continue the war either by a foreign loan or by popular subscription, her last war loan having been secured only by “holding up” Russian banks and compelling them to deliver 120,000,000 rubles, receiving five per cent bonds in return, which they may dispose of to the public if they can. Bonds for a further 80,000,000 rubles were deposited in savings-banks, the government by this signifying that it regards this fund as at its disposal.