Current Mention

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Washington, D.C. · Apr 28, 1904

— A general tie-up on the railways of Hungary is reported, due to a strike which began April 19.

— One hundred Italian miners were buried by an avalanche which fell near the village of Pragelato, Italy, April 20.

— A report from Crockett, Tex., states that oil-well drillers near that place bored through the trunk of a large tree which was encountered at a depth of a thousand feet.

— It is reported from China that the Chinese antichristian society which promoted the Boxer uprising is rapidly gaining adherents in many places, and another outbreak against foreigners is feared.

— Turks and Bulgarians continue fighting near the boundary line between those countries, a battle having recently taken place sixty-two miles from Salonica, in which many were killed on each side.

— A common pleas court in Sandusky, Ohio, has given a decision in favor of Christian Science as a legitimate practise for healing the sick, holding a law which would exclude members of that cult from such practise to be unconstitutional.

— New pension legislation which is under consideration by Congress and has the approval of President Roosevelt, is expected to increase the annual expenditure for pensions from $140,000,000 (the estimate for 1904) to $160,000,000 or more.

— Report of a violent anti-Jewish outbreak in Bulgaria, news of which the Bulgarian government sought to suppress, has reached London from private sources. Outrages of a shocking and inhuman character were perpetrated by the mob on their victims, the rioters being finally dispersed by the police.

— The last step in the transfer of the title of the Panama Canal was taken in Paris, April 23, and the delivery of the property to the United States and payment for the same will immediately follow. Everything will then be in readiness to begin the work of completing the canal.

— In a Tibetan fort recently captured by the British the discovery was made of a room in which were scores of human heads, some giving evidence of having been but recently cut off. The necessary conclusion seems to be that the Buddhist prohibition against taking life is not so rigidly observed by devotees of that religion as was supposed.

— The “third great fire” which was looked for by some after the Baltimore and Rochester conflagrations, came April 19, the city of Toronto, Ontario, being the victim. The flames devastated an area of fourteen acres in the heart of the city, causing a property loss of $12,000,000, on which there was an insurance of $7,000,000. One hundred and fourteen buildings were destroyed, 250 firms were put out of business, and about 7,000 people thrown out of employment.

— The buried city of Herculaneum, which was destroyed by the same eruption of Vesuvius that buried Pompeii, is to be excavated. A dispatch from Rome says: “An archaeological undertaking of a most important character is about to be set on foot, namely, the complete excavation of Herculaneum. It is proposed that this vast work be carried out by the co-operation of Italy with all the civilized countries, and that there be a central managing committee at Rome with national committees elsewhere.”

— Russia has been pressing Turkey for the payment of $4,000,000 war indemnity which Turkey has long been owing but has never paid, and now Russia demands that in lieu of this payment Turkey grant permission for the Russian Black Sea fleet to pass through the Dardanelles. Such permission would no doubt be vigorously opposed by Great Britain. It is reported that Japan does not desire to press the war beyond the point of securing Port Arthur and Vladivostock and making herself secure in Korea, but no doubt Japan designs to consolidate the Oriental nations under her leadership against Russia and the world powers.