Current Mention

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Washington, D.C. · Jun 23, 1904

— The Russian ruler of Finland was assassinated at Helsingfors by a student, the son of a Finnish senator, June 16.

— A man named Spangler, an ex-merchant of York, Pa., is posing in New York City as a prophet. Among other things he affirms that the end of the world will come in 1908. Considerable space is devoted to his predictions by the papers.

— Justice Gaynor, of the New York supreme court, has given a decision against Sunday ball playing, which pleases the clergymen who have been combatting Sunday sport in New York City. He holds that professional baseball playing on Sunday is illegal under the Sunday law.

— The papal cardinal Satolli arrived in Washington, June 18. It is announced that he is to dine with Secretary Taft and also to lunch with the president. There is much speculation as to the character of his mission here, and talk of the establishment of a papal nunciature at Washington continues to be persistent.

— Not much is heard at the present time of Turkish atrocities in Armenia, but that they have not ceased is evidenced by dispatches, such as the following, dated at London, June 16: “A dispatch to The Daily Mail from Constantinople says that the consular reports confirm the destruction of many Armenian villages in the Sassun district. The number of killed is estimated to exceed 3,000 persons.”

— Recent features of the war in the Far East are a battle fought at Vafango, about fifty-five miles north of Port Arthur, in which a Russian force under General Stakelberg was defeated by the Japanese, with a loss of 2,000 men and a number of cannon; and a raid by the Vladivostock squadron, which encountered and sank two Japanese transports on board, which were about 1,000 men. The siege of Port Arthur continues.

— Eighty-seven union miners, including a number of union officials, in the territory of the recent disturbances in Colorado, are indicted for murder, charged with complicity in the crime at Independence, where non-union miners were killed with dynamite. A manifesto by the mine employers in Teller County declares that the Western Federation of Miners, the Trades Assembly, walking delegates, and labor agitators are to remain banished from that section of the State.

— News is received from Cuba of a destructive hurricane, said to be the worst in years, which swept over the eastern half of the island, beginning June 10 and continuing to the 13th. Fourteen inches of rain fell in five hours, causing rivers and creeks to become floods which destroyed houses and swept their inmates to death. Great damage to property is reported from Santiago and Guantanamo. The village of El Cobre was destroyed, and at that place the greatest loss of life was reported, forty-five dead being known, with many others missing.

— The demands of the Moorish brigand Raisouli upon the sultan of Morocco, as the conditions of the release of his American and English captives, are reported as follows: First, the dismissal of the governor of Tangier; second, the disbanding of the northern army; third, the payment of £11,000 ransom; fourth, the release of all tribesmen; fifth, the arrest and imprisonment of certain government sheiks whom Raisouli accuses of having been parties to his original arrest; sixth, a grant by the sultan of the villages and districts, Zenat and Alrish, to be entirely independent of the Moorish government and under Raisouli’s sole jurisdiction. Also absolute control of no less than four Moorish provinces, and that no less than three nations, including the United States, shall guarantee the absolute performance of the sultan’s promise.

— The mortality list from the appalling catastrophe to the Sunday-school picnic crowd on the steamer “Slocum,” June 15, is still not definitely ascertained, but it is believed will approximate to 1,000. A large number of these were small children and infants, of whom no account was made in the sale of tickets. The captain and pilots on the ill-fated craft are under arrest. The responsibility for the gross negligence which allowed such a floating fire trap to be crowded full of women and children, and for the rotten and worthless condition of the life preservers which the steamer carried, remains to be fixed, for this responsibility extends beyond the owners of the boat. No adequate explanation is given for the captain’s remarkable conduct in racing his boat for nearly half a mile against a strong breeze which carried the flames directly over the steamer and the human throngs which filled it, when he might have gained the shore of the river by going only three hundred feet. It is stated that while there are laws which provide for the inspection of the machinery of a boat, and limit its carrying capacity in passengers, there is no law under which a boat can be condemned as unsafe by reason of the material of which it is constructed. The “Slocum” was largely of wooden construction, and being thirteen years old, the woodwork was thoroughly dried and in condition to burn easily and quickly when once ignited. The fire is said to have originated in the most inexcusable carelessness, two barrels of glassware intended for the barroom having just been received, in which the glass was packed in hay, this hay on removal from the barrels being thrown down in a room where there were quantities of oil. Report adds one more feature to make the carelessness complete—a lighted cigar in the mouth of some devotee of the weed. Under this combination the rest soon followed. Divers who examined the wreck found evidence that no attempt had been made to operate the fire-extinguishing apparatus. The men employed on the boat were mostly roustabouts from whom no discipline or concerted action could be expected. It is certainly an anomalous kind of legislation which compels theaters, from which the people can escape to the street and safety, to be of fire-proof material, and allows excursion boats, outside of which, when away from shore, there is no safety, but only certain death for those unable to swim, to be so constructed and operated as to make them veritable death traps.