Current Mention

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Washington, D. C. · Dec 15, 1904

— The Servian government is seeking a loan of $8,000,000 for military purposes.

— Twelve miners were killed by an explosion in a coal-mine at Burnett, Wash., December 8.

— A New York salvage company has closed a contract with the Cuban government for the raising and removal of the remains of the United States battle-ship “Maine,” which was blown up in Havana harbor. The United States government, it is said, will offer no objection, and the plan of the salvage company is to transport the wreck to Coney Island, where it will constitute one of the leading attractions of that popular resort.

— A recent dispatch from Turkey tells of the first labor demonstration that ever occurred in that country, which proved to be a more serious matter for the agitators than the latter anticipated. According to the London Daily Mail “the workmen in a factory of the tobacco monopoly became enraged by the introduction of machinery, and attacked their superiors, threatening to strike unless their wages were increased. The police decided that a strike would be equivalent to a revolutionary movement, and that its instigators should therefore be arrested. As a result 220 persons are now in prison for their connection with the trouble.”

— At a recent dinner of the Authors’ Club, in London, a topic of discussion was the great and increasing frequency of the crime of homicide in the United States. The Washington Post in a report states that “Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, who presided, charged that the law in this great nation of America had outgrown its strength with appalling results. He said that while Great Britain in the Boer War lost 22,000 lives, the United States lost in the same three years 32,000 lives through murder or homicide. Lord Alverston said he agreed with all the strictures made by Conan Doyle, and that his remarks were no stronger than he had heard from many Americans themselves.”

— A Paris dispatch dated December 10 says: “Premier Combes and his cabinet have weathered another storm, the vote in the Chamber of Deputies yesterday evening having the effect of making the ministry stronger than ever. This assures carrying out M. Combes’s program, of which the principal feature is the separation of church and state. The overthrow of the program has been the real issue, although the opposition combined upon a number of minor questions, whereon they were able to arouse popular sympathy.” The chief of these was the government’s spy system, over which Premier Combes’s opponents succeeded in arousing an intense agitation. The government by this system collects secret information concerning the private lives of army officers and civil officials. The entire country took sides for or against the practise, and scores of duels were fought between army officers, judges, deputies, and officials. One of these duels was fought by an official holding a permit for the encounter from the French government, which is regarded as constituting a formal, official recognition of this form of combat.

— Reports from Port Arthur state that the Russian fleet in the harbor, having been completely disabled by the fire of the Japanese heavy guns mounted on “203 Meter Hill,” which the Japanese recently captured after several days of hard fighting, there will be no general assault on the fortress, the Japanese having attained their main object, which was to dispose of the Russian fleet, and prevent a union of that with the expected Baltic fleet. It is stated that the Japanese will rely on starvation for the reduction of the fortress. Skirmishing continues between the Russian and Japanese armies facing each other near Mukden, but no important battle has taken place. It is reported that the czar has recalled the Baltic fleet, and that no third fleet will be sent.

— A report from Rome states that a French marquise who before her marriage was Miss Mary Gwendolin Caldwell, well known in Catholic circles in this country, and who gave a third of her fortune to establish the Catholic university in Washington, D. C., has now renounced Catholicism and returned to the Protestant faith. She is quoted as having made the statement: “Yes, it is true that I have left the Roman Catholic Church. Since I have been living in Europe, my eyes have been opened to what that church really is, and to its anything but sanctity. . . . For years I have been trying to rid myself of the subtle yet overwhelming influence of a church which pretends not only to the privilege of being ‘the only true church,’ but of being alone able to open the gates of heaven to a sorrowful, sinful world. At last my honest Protestant blood has asserted itself, and I now forever repudiate and cast off ‘the yoke of Rome.’”

— According to the London Express, Russia is experiencing the horrors of her war with Japan not alone at the front where the fighting is being done, but also in almost an equal measure in some of the home districts. In a letter written to this journal from Moscow it is stated that “the terrible strain imposed by the war on the internal resources of the country has brought central Russia into hunger’s grip. Desperate bread riots are reported in more than a hundred districts, and the peasantry are dying of starvation by scores. If the strain continues much longer, they will die by the thousands. There is piteous distress even in Moscow. Black bread has risen twenty per cent in price. Rioting is feared, and the troops are kept on the alert. The price of bread has trebled at Tver and quintupled at Uglich. The unceasing demands of the government and the shameless corruption of the tax collectors are driving the people to madness. Many have been killed and wounded by the soldiers in suppressing organized food riots. . . . Violent demonstrations against the war have been made throughout the country. If the people were united, there would be a revolution.” Public anti-war demonstrations of several days’ duration are also reported by the Odessa correspondent of the London Standard.