p. 22 | Current Mention

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Washington, D.C. · Jun 16, 1904

Current Mention

— France has sent a warning to Turkey that the atrocities in Armenia must cease. An investigation made by the French ambassador at Constantinople into existing conditions in the Sassoun district shows evidences of recent bloody combats and the destruction of from fifteen to twenty villages.

— The New York Sun states that the board of education of that city has decided to add military drill to the public school curriculum “with a view to giving the boys a chance to see how they would like to be soldiers.” This would be much like giving a boy a taste of wine to let him see how he would like to be a toper.

— A battle of some importance was fought at Siuyen, a point about midway between Newchwang and the mouth of the Yalu River, June 7, between Japanese belonging to General Kuroki’s army and a force of Cossacks, the latter being driven back. The siege of Port Arthur is being pressed, and its early surrender is expected.

— An ant which is an enemy of the Mexican boll weevil, the insect that so seriously menaces the cotton industry in this country, is reported to have been found in Guatemala, and it is hoped the ants can be made to thrive in Texas, and to exterminate the weevil pest, as they are said to have done in their native haunts. A large quantity are being imported to Texas for experiment.

— Recently some Americans who were granted an audience with the pope refused to perform the customary acts by which the pontiff is acknowledged as a being entitled to worship; as a result, says a Rome dispatch dated June 1, “The Vatican authorities have given the strictest notice to those who recommend people for audiences of the pope that they must guarantee that such persons will conform to Vatican etiquette in kneeling and kissing the hand of the pope. This notification was issued as a result of the conduct a few weeks ago of some Americans who refused to kneel when the pope appeared.”

— The State food and dairy commissioner of Pennsylvania, Dr. Warren, has begun a war in that State on butchers and meat dealers who “embalm” meat with various poisonous preservatives. The commissioner, says a Philadelphia dispatch, has a list of one hundred dealers who have been preserving meat with sulphate of soda. Dr. Warren is quoted as saying: “I have been waiting to get hold of the big fellows. There are some large Western packing houses that are flagrant violators of the law in regard to preserving and embalming their product, and I intend to compel them either to stop embalming or to cease doing business in Pennsylvania.”

— The English royal commission appointed in 1901 to investigate the question whether bovine tuberculosis can be transmitted to human beings, has made a report, the main conclusion of which is stated thus: “We have most carefully compared the tuberculosis set up in bovine animals by material of human origin with that set up in bovine animals by material of bovine origin, and so far have found the one, both in its broad general features and in its finer histological details, identical with the other. Our records contain accounts of post-mortem examinations of bovine animals infected with the tuberculosis material of human beings which might be used as typical descriptions of ordinary bovine tuberculosis.” The opinion is further expressed that this investigation “seems to show quite clearly that it would be very unwise to frame or modify legislative measures in accordance with the view that human and bovine tubercle bacilli are specifically different, and that the disease caused by one is wholly different from the disease caused by the other.” The commissioners experimented with more than two hundred bovine animals.

— According to Dean George F. James, of the Department of Pedagogy in Minnesota State University, the profession of teacher is not a paying one in that section of the country. He told the St. Paul Federation of Grade Teachers that more than 100,000 teachers would retire this year because their salaries did not afford a living. Many school boards, he said, expected high school teachers to instruct in Latin and Greek and in several sciences, to conduct glee clubs and other musical organizations, and take general charge of physical culture and athletics for fifty dollars a month, and only nine months in the year. A laborer could earn more wages, and work every month in the year.

— The British and Foreign Bible Society, following a precedent established in previous wars, has obtained permission from the Russian and Japanese authorities to distribute Bibles among the soldiers of both nationalities. The work of Bible distribution in time of war is organized on a large scale. During the Crimean War (as we learn from the London Christian), 204,569 copies of the Scriptures were circulated among the English allies and the enemy. During the recent war in South Africa over 133,000 Bibles, Testaments, and Gospels were distributed in 1900 and 1901 to the belligerents on both sides and families in the concentration camps, in addition to the supplies provided for contingents from the antipodes and Canada. Scriptures in fourteen different languages were supplied to Miss Edith Rhodes (sister of the late Cecil Rhodes) for distribution among the Boers in the hospital at De Aar. In 1894, when China and Japan were at war, the Bible committee in Japan distributed 113,939 copies of the Scriptures. During the Boxer outbreak in 1900, 4,000 copies were given to the Japanese troops with the allies.

— It is believed the reign of lawlessness in Colorado, which is now of several months’ standing, has finally been terminated by the expulsion of the striking union miners from the State. A large number of them were put on trains, and deported across the Kansas border, where they were dropped in a sparsely settled country, and left to shift for themselves. At Independence, near Cripple Creek, June 6, a large quantity of dynamite was exploded underneath a platform at the railway station, upon which at the time a large number of non-union miners were standing, awaiting an incoming train. Fifteen men were killed by the explosion, and many others were seriously hurt. When the news reached Victor, a mass-meeting was called to consider the situation, and at this meeting some one precipitated a riot at which guns were fired, two men being killed, and others wounded. A squad of soldiers sent by the mayor to quell the riot were fired on by union miners gathered in a hall. The soldiers returned the fire, and charged into the hall, the miners surrendering after a score of their number had been struck by bullets. At Cripple Creek and Victor, State troops were put in possession, and a censorship was placed on the Victor Record. The citizens generally sympathized with the mine owners against the union miners, and some of the officials of the latter were threatened with hanging. A union mine in the Cripple Creek district was closed by the commander of the State troops, who in a proclamation justified his action on the ground that the employees of the mine were “dangerous, lawless men,” and that “said mine has become, and now is, a menace to the welfare and safety of the good people of the county, and a hindrance to the restoration of peace and good order.” A pitched battle between the militia and union miners was fought at Dunnville, a mining camp thirteen miles from Victor, June 8. One man was killed, and fourteen of the miners were captured. The same day the Victor Record office was entered by eight masked men who demolished the printing outfit, and ordered the employees to leave the town. The Record has been regarded as the organ of the Western Federation of Miners. The supreme court of Colorado has upheld the action of Governor Peabody in suspending the writ of habeas corpus in the case of C. H. Moyer, president of the Western Federation of Miners, who is held as a military prisoner at Telluride.