Current Mention

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Washington, D. C. · Mar 22, 1906

— Representative Hull, chairman of the House committee on military affairs, in a recent speech in Congress stated that in his view of the Chinese situation it was imperative that the United States should be ready to fight at any time for the maintenance of its position in the Orient.

— A very disastrous railway wreck occurred at Adobe, Colo., on the Denver and Rio Grande Railway, March 16, two passenger-trains coming into collision during a blizzard. Forty persons were killed and about a score of others injured. Failure to deliver orders is given as the cause of the wreck.

— There is every indication that another great coal strike, including both anthracite and bituminous fields will be inaugurated April 1. The operators have accumulated immense supplies of coal, and are in a position to reap financial benefit from an advance in the price of coal which a strike would entail, and there is apparently no prospect that they will agree to the miners’ demands.

— Another famine is threatened in Spain. A Madrid dispatch says: “Following the drought and the resulting agricultural distress last year, the prevalence of unusual heat and the lack of rain for the past three weeks cause anxiety, threatening a famine next summer. The position is especially serious in the rural districts of Andalusia, where there is general misery. The towns also are suffering. There have been many strikes in Andalusia.”

— A mysterious night visit was made to the White House recently by H. H. Rogers and John D. Archbold, the Standard Oil magnates. It is now stated that their mission was to advise the President that “financial circles in New York” were getting very uneasy over prospective legislation by Congress to curb the power of the railways and the trusts, and ask him to exert his influence on the side of “conservatism” and prevent any radical action from being taken.

— A project for a through-train service between points in the United States and Havana, Cuba, is reported to be under consideration by Mr. Henry M. Flagler, a multi-millionaire of the Standard Oil Company. His idea is to have ocean-going ferry-boats between Florida and Havana, upon which trains can be run, thus obviating any necessity for change of cars.

— English Catholics, realizing that the Liberal government is about to abolish the Education act which gave state aid to Catholics and members of the established church at the expense of the non-conformers, have come forward with a statement saying that “no settlement of the question will be accepted by Catholics which denies to Catholic parents the right to have for their children Catholic schools in which the teachers shall be Catholics, and give definite religious instruction under Catholic control during school hours.” New Catholic schools, the address says, must be recognized and maintained, and enlargements of existing schools sanctioned where the needs of the Catholic population demand.

— An account of the great volcanic eruption which is in progress on the island of Savai, of the Samoan group, says: “Three villages have been completely destroyed, including Malaeola, where was located the finest cocoa plantation on the island. The lava from the volcano is flowing into the ocean in a stream three quarters of a mile wide and twenty feet deep, at the rate of twenty feet an hour. At night a solid wall of molten lava five miles long can be seen reaching far out into the sea. For some distance the sea water is boiling, and the surf breaking over the fiery stream. The government recently chartered a steamer to remove women and children from the zone of danger.”

— France is having a hard time in the effort to shake herself wholly free from the long-standing alliance with the church. The clerical element, which in some parts of France is very strong, has now taken the attitude of violent resistance against the completion of the work of “secularizing the state.” Very serious disturbances have occurred in some places, and a crisis has evidently been reached. Prophecies are even made that there will be civil war. The “crime” of secularizing the state is, in the eyes of the church party, a most heinous one, calculated to bring down the judgments of God. The recent great mining disaster in the Courrières district is, in the view of this party, a signal manifestation of the divine displeasure at the course the state is pursuing, and those who are now leading the state are charged with the responsibility for this calamity. Government officials who visited the scene of the disaster were greeted with cries of “murderers,” “assassins,” etc., and with difficulty escaped personal violence. A Paris dispatch states with reference to the attitude of the pope: “The chief point of public interest is the attitude that the pope will adopt. The situation would be completely cleared if he should counsel submission to the law. The obedience of the Catholic population would be implicit. It is the impression in non-clerical circles, however, that he will let events take their course, without regard to the serious results that may follow.”