Current Mention

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Apr 21, 1903

— The czar’s coming visit to Rome was postponed, it is reported, on account of the discovery of a plot to assassinate him while on Italian soil.

— A dispatch from southern Russia says that general and copious rains have fallen in that district, and have removed the fears for the safety of the crops, which had been aroused by a long-continued drought.

— According to Senator Cullom, of Illinois, the recent decision of the United States court against the railway trust known as the Northern Securities merger, means that all trusts in restraint of trade can be suppressed by the government.

— The latest step in the coercion of Finland is a Russian decree which has been published in Helsingfors, prescribing measures for the “maintenance of order” in Finland. The governor general is empowered to close hotels, shops, and factories, to prohibit private meetings, and to expel from Finland all persons who are considered undesirable.

— The reported Russian demands on Turkey are that Turkey pay compensation to the amount of $24,000 to the family of M. Stcherbina, the Russian consul at Mitrovitza, who was shot and killed by an Albanian soldier; that Turkey build a memorial chapel at the scene of the murder, and that she send 20,000 Anatolian troops to repress the Albanians.

— Not for many years have large icebergs been sighted so far south in the North Atlantic as they are this spring. The new “Kronprinz Wilhelm,” on her last trip westward passed within a few miles of one that was estimated to be 300 feet tall above the water and 600 feet long. Atlantic liners have been warned to take a course sixty miles south of the customary route, to avoid the danger of a collision.

— Another obstacle in the way of acquiring the lands of the Philippine friars has been encountered. The friars demand an exorbitant price for their real estate. The government, says a Manila dispatch, regards the preliminary estimates submitted by the friars as excessive, and private corporations which have acquired interests in the church lands by consent of the friars demand even a higher price than the latter. Consequently, we are informed, “the negotiations are at a standstill.”

— A new way of attempting to reach the north pole is to be tried soon by two German explorers, says a Berlin telegram. With the exception of the unfortunate Andree, who tried to reach the pole in a balloon, arctic explorers have always been stopped in their northward course by encountering a barrier of ice. It is proposed now to build a submarine boat that will go under the ice, and thus be able to reach the pole, provided the pole is surrounded with water. Drs. Scholl and Kuempfe are the names of the adventurous characters who will lead the undertaking. Wireless telegraphy is to be employed, by means of which communication will be maintained between the boat and a station which is to be established between latitudes seventy-eight and eighty degrees north. By the same means the results of the voyage will be communicated to the civilized world.

— The question whether King Edward VII will, on the occasion of his coming visit to the Italian court, also pay his respects to Pope Leo, is at present the chief topic of conversation at the Vatican, says a Rome dispatch. A very difficult point of etiquette, it appears, is involved in it. The king will go to the residence of the British ambassador to the Quirinal, and from there set out on his visit to the Vatican, if such a visit is made; and it will then devolve on Cardinal Rampolla, the papal secretary of state, to return the visit, to do which he must go to the house of Great Britain’s representative at the Quirinal, and this would be paying too much respect to the Quirinal. Papal diplomacy will, however, no doubt be found equal to the emergency.

— In making mention of the medical surprises which follow one another so rapidly these days, a prominent Eastern journal inquires, “Who would have thought that the foremost cause of leprosy, the most dreaded of diseases, is the eating of unwholesome fish? And yet, when this cause is once suspected, a multitude of proofs seem to support it, and an investigation made in India brings back the report that such is probably the fact. It seems that where leprosy prevails, as in Palestine, Norway, Nova Scotia, and Hawaii, fish is a large item of food.” More and more are medical discoveries showing the dangers to which people subject themselves by the use of a flesh diet. The only sure way to avoid “unwholesome meat” is to exclude meat from the diet.

— The largest cargo and passenger ship in the world — the “Minnesota” — was launched April 16 at the Croton ship yards in New London, Conn. The ship was built by the order of J. J. Hill, the railway magnate and president of the Great Northern Steamship Company, and is one of several which will be run by the company on the Pacific, the intention being to capture the trade between Western North America and the Orient. The ship is 630 feet long, 73½ feet wide, and 56 feet high to the upper deck. The hull and decks of the “Minnesota” contain a greater total of steel strength than is possessed by the largest battle-ship. The vessel’s cargo capacity is equal to that of a railway train seven miles long. The nearest competitor of the “Minnesota” in size — the “Cedric” of the White Star Line — has less dead weight carrying capacity by 9,000 tons.

— The facts connected with the assassination of Governor-elect Goebel at Frankfort, Ky., in 1900, seem finally to have come to light in the testimony of Henry E. Youtsey given before the court at Frankfort, April 16. Youtsey was brought to court from the penitentiary, to which he had been sentenced for complicity in the crime. He declared that the fatal shot was fired by Jim Howard, who knew Goebel only as the latter was pointed out to him a moment before the shooting, and whose price for doing the deed was that he be pardoned for a previous murder of which he feared conviction. The whole plan, he declared further, was executed under the direction of Governor Taylor, to whom Youtsey was a political rival. Governor Taylor was regarded as the leader, and knowing, he said, that the governor and the pardoning board were behind them, the conspirators had no fear of the consequences of their crime.