Items of Current News

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Jan 30, 1900

FromReview and Herald, Vol. 77, No. 5.

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Items of Current News

For Week Ending January 27, 1900.

—The Canadian Pacific Railroad has sent a check for $15,000 to the South African war fund.

—The largest part of Dawson, Alaska, was wiped out by fire the evening of January 10. Loss, more than $500,000.

—The Trappist monks, the most austere of all the Catholic orders, are to build two monasteries in Massachusetts.

—Three hundred automobile cabs are in service in New York City, at twenty-five cents a mile, or seventy-five cents an hour.

—Many Buddhists are protesting against the Japanese government bill for the regulation of religions, as under the new law all religions will be equal.

—January 11 the number of deaths at Bombay, India, due to the bubonic plague, increased from 282 to 376. The normal death-rate is seventy-five a day.

—The German government has called upon Krupp & Co. not to furnish war materials either to Great Britain or to the Transvaal Republic during the progress of the war.

—January 16, in a battle between Americans and Filipinos, sixty Spaniards and $20,000 were captured by the Americans, and fifty Filipinos were killed or wounded.

—President McKinley has created a new military department, consisting of the Territory of Alaska, and has assigned Col. George M. Randall, Eighth Infantry, to command.

—Malietoa Tanus, the Samoan chief, has addressed protests to the United States, Great Britain, and Germany, against the partition of Samoa, which he declares is a crime against the law of nations.

—It is said that President Kruger will tell Adelbert Hay, the newly appointed United States consul to Pretoria, that he is persona non grata, and at liberty to return to Washington at his own convenience.

—The United States troops are still attempting to “surround” and “destroy the rebel forces” in the Philippines, while the Filipinos continue to “escape,” or to “elude the vigilance of their pursuers.”

—The claim of Admiral Dewey and the officers and men of the United States Asiatic Squadron, for bounty for the destruction of the Spanish fleet at Manila, was recently argued before the United States Court of Claims.

—The British forces, according to latest reports, are pushing on to the rescue of Ladysmith. Their progress is slow, owing to the fact that the Boers are contesting every inch of the ground. The main position of the Boers has not yet been taken by the British.

—The movement in Chicago in favor of the Sunday closing of stores is growing rapidly. Sunday, January 14, for the first time in the history of the city, nearly all the retail grocers and butchers closed their shops, and many other dealers have promised to do so hereafter.

—A pro-Boer mass meeting in Washington, D. C., January 21, was addressed by Senators Mason, Allen, and Hale, and several representatives in Congress. A like meeting was also held in Faneuil Hall, Boston, the 17th inst., George F. Hollis, ex-United States consul at Pretoria, and George Fred Williams being the chief speakers.

—John Ruskin, the famous English philosopher and art critic, died January 20, of influenza, in his native city, aged eighty-one years. He was born in London in 1819, and devoted his entire life to the study of art and to literature. W. E. Gladstone considered Ruskin second to no English prose writer on account of his pure English and his lucidity of expression.

—In December, 1899, the United States government receipts were $7,613,000 in excess of the expenditures; for the last six months the surplus was $21,026,000, as against a corresponding deficit of $83,719,000 for the corresponding period of 1898. The public debt of the country, Dec. 30, 1899, less cash in the treasury, amounted to $1,134,300,007, a decrease for the month of $5,791,824.

—Kwang-Chau-Wan Bay, a disputed territory in China, has been seized by France.

—On the reassembling of Parliament, England will ask for a further war credit of £20,000,000.

—Sousa’s band has been designated as the “Official American band” of the Paris Exposition.

—Queen Victoria has notified the king of Belgium that she is not ready to mediate the war in South Africa.

—Thousands of head of stock perished, and many persons lost their lives, in the blizzard that swept over New Mexico, January 10.

—The British losses in South Africa, all told, in killed, wounded, and captured, according to General Buller’s last list, are 8,216 men.

—The Atlantic liner “Kaiser Wilhelm Der Grosse” crossed the ocean in five days, fifteen hours, and fifty minutes, beating her own previous records.

—Under an old law, which has been revived, no person can enter the Transvaal without declaring, before his consul, that he has no intention of fighting for the Boers.

—Dr. Elie Metchnikoff, of Paris, says that he expects to discover serums that will feed the human cells so accurately that the life of man may be prolonged to 250 years. So he says.

—A private of the Irish Rifles, who has fought at Stormberg, says that when General Gatacre saw the trap into which the guide had led his troops, he shot the guide dead on the spot.

—A dispatch from Berlin, dated January 24, says that the German bark “Hans Wagner,” stopped, December 19, in South African waters, by the British gunboat “Peerless,” has been released.

—A call is now being made for a United States telegraph cable from San Francisco to Hawaii, and thence to the Philippines. This country is now paying foreign cable companies $400,000 per annum for messages to and from Manila alone.

—No definite late news has been received from the seat of war in South Africa. Both British and Boer victories are reported, but no reliable news. However, heavy fighting is going on as the British push their way slowly toward Ladysmith.

—The republican element in Portugal is working up an agitation against the present monarchy, on the basis that England’s interference in Delagoa Bay violates Portugal’s neutrality, and is “due to the weakness of the existing régime of government.”

—Beginning with March 13, 1900, Rev. C. M. Sheldon, author of In His Steps, will edit the Topeka Daily Capital, for one week only, on “What-Would-Jesus-Do” lines. There will be no police or sporting news in the paper during that time, nor objectionable advertisements.

—Among the bills to be presented in the French Chamber of Deputies is one carrying out the views communicated by the Superior Committee of Hygiene, which asked the populace to abstain from spitting in the streets and public places, in order to avoid the diffusion of microbes.

—The New York Observer points out the fact that “the Jews taught that God had more regard for adverbs than for any other part of speech, because adverbs describe the manner in which a thing is done.” However, the word “very,” as an adverb, is found less than twenty times in the King James version of the Bible.

—A recent dispatch from Durban, South Africa, states that “the German bark ‘Marie,’ loaded with sulphur, which was captured by the British cruiser ‘Fearless’ and taken to Port Elizabeth, has been unconditionally released by the British authorities.” This pacifies the ruffled feelings of the German people not a little.

—The empress dowager of China recently issued “a secret decree, holding her provincial governors to strict responsibility for the immediate defense of their respective provinces, should any attack be made upon them.” In this decree she says: “The various powers are casting upon us looks of tiger-like voracity, hustling each other in their endeavors to be the first to seize on our innermost territory. They think that China, having neither money nor troops, would never venture to go to war with them.”

—With the arrival at Manila of the transport “Grant,” which left San Francisco, December 21, with the Forty-eighth Volunteer Infantry, General Otis will have command of a force of 65,000 men. The army now in the Philippines aggregates 62,500 men, of whom 31,000 are regular troops, and 31,500 are volunteers. With the arrival of the “Grant” the entire United States volunteer strength of 34,000 men will be in the Philippines.

—Last year some Missouri farmers were persuaded to sell their possessions, and go to Jerusalem “to see Christ come again,” in his glory. It is reported that they are now without money, and crowded into one small house, but still expectant. Commenting upon this, the Congregationalist says: “It is more than eighteen hundred years since Christ told his disciples to go out from Jerusalem, and bear witness to him unto the uttermost parts of the earth. It would be hard to find a place in the earth to-day less attractive than Jerusalem, yet several colonies of Americans are waiting in and around it, expecting to meet Jesus there.”