p. 21 | Current Mention

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Feb 25, 1909

Current Mention

— By the collision of two vessels in the Mediterranean, February 12, thirty men lost their lives. Both vessels went down.

— On February 16 a bill passed the House of Representatives, requiring all ocean-going passenger vessels carrying over fifty passengers to be equipped with wireless telegraph apparatus. A bill of the same import has been introduced in the Senate also, but has not yet passed that body.

— A terrible theater disaster occurred at Acapulco, Mexico, on February 14. A performance was going on when it was discovered that the building was on fire. The exits were few and narrow, and were soon jammed by the terrified audience. Of the one thousand in attendance, three hundred ten were burned to death. One hundred others were so seriously injured that they are still in the hospitals.

— President Roosevelt is to call a world-wide conservation conference to meet at The Hague to consider the question of conserving the natural resources of the nations. The conference will take stock of the materials upon which the human race must exist, and consider ways and means of preventing waste, developing unused resources, and discovering substitutes for dwindling resources which can not be restored.

— The earthquake which was registered by seismographs in all parts of the world on January 23, but which could not be located, has at last been found. It occurred in the mountainous regions of western Persia, three hundred miles from Teheran. It is stated that about fifty villages were destroyed, and between five and six thousand persons lost their lives in the destruction of their homes. It is further stated that some villages seem to have been completely swallowed up, as no trace of them can be found. The Persian government is now seeking to provide for the distressed survivors, who have been without any means of communicating with the outside world, save by courier.

— The Argentine steamer “Presidente Roca” was burned, and sank off the east coast of South America on February 19. Twenty of her passengers were lost.

— On February 19 the Senate passed the pension and army bills, carrying a total appropriation of $263,505,050. This amount includes an appropriation of $350,000 for the building of roads in Alaska.

— After March 1 of this year the letter rate between the United States and Newfoundland will be two cents, the same as it is now between the United States and England, and the United States and Germany.

— Colonel Goethals, chief engineer of the Panama Canal, has made his report to the congressional committee on ways and means, in which he recommends emphatically the lock type of the canal. He states that the cost of the lock type of the canal will be $375,000,000, including the purchase price, whereas the sea-level type would cost $563,000,000. The lock canal, he declares, can be finished in 1915, while the sea-level canal could not be finished before 1921.

— Signs of another war brewing in Central America, between Guatemala and Salvador on the one side and Honduras and Nicaragua on the other, have caused the United States and Mexico to notify these states that at the first overt act of war, there will be armed intervention by Mexico and the United States to compel these Central American states to abide by the spirit of the treaty of Amapala, which created the peace tribunal at Cartago. It was only last July that the tribunal of peace was created for the express purpose of settling difficulties between the Central American states.

— A conference between representatives of the United States, Canada, and Mexico, known as the North American Conservation Conference, is now in progress in Washington, D. C., having been called together by President Roosevelt, who gave the opening address. The purpose of this conference is to devise ways and means of conserving the natural resources of the countries represented, to preserve the vegetation on the watersheds of the various international streams so as to protect the water-supply, prevent the washing of soil from the mountains, and prevent floods.

— The Federal Grand Jury of the District of Columbia has brought charges of criminal libel against the Press Publishing Company of New York; Joseph Pulitzer, publisher of the New York World; Caleb M. Van Hamm and Robert H. Lyman, of the same journal; also against Delavan Smith and Charles R. Williams, of the Indianapolis News. The indictments were brought in connection with the alleged libelous articles connecting President Roosevelt, President-Elect William H. Taft, Secretary of State Elihu Root, Charles P. Taft, J. P. Morgan, W. N. Cromwell, and Douglas Robinson, brother-in-law of the President, with reported irregularities in the matter of the Panama Canal purchase. Bench warrants have been issued for the arrest of these influential publishers. The case has been before the court for a number of weeks, and has excited much comment throughout the press of the country.