Current Mention

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Nov 14, 1907

— One of Germany’s greatest manufacturing firms has decided to make a business of building military air-ships and selling them, just as the Krupps supply cannon to various countries of the world.

— Late last week the commercial telegraphers’ strike was called off in New York, Chicago, Baltimore, and Washington, by vote of the local unions in the various cities. The strikers claim that material concessions have been promised them.

— The relations between Uruguay and Argentina are somewhat strained on account of the retention by the Argentine authorities of a Uruguayan steam vessel which was seized at a small island in the River Plate. The ownership of the island is in dispute, but it has been held for a century by Argentina.

— Serious mishaps seem to have befallen some of the large sailing vessels carrying coal for the war-ship fleet that is to be sent to the Pacific. Two vessels leaving Baltimore, Md., March 25, for San Francisco, have recently been heard from, one in Melbourne, Australia, whither she had been driven by adverse winds, and the other is in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, the second time for repairs. But now the wreck of a four-masted sailing vessel believed to be another coal boat has been discovered near the Straits of Magellan. There are evidences that the crew landed on a near-by island, but as it is inhabited by cannibals, no search was made inland. It is feared that those of the crew of forty men who may have escaped to this island were eaten by the savages.

— A violent earthquake is reported from the province of Huesca, Spain, in which the earth opened, leaving great fissures, and the disturbance was accompanied by subterranean rumblings, which caused a panic among the people. Many houses were shaken down, but the number of fatalities is not known.

— Although the earliest reports of the landslide at Karatagh, Turkestan, which followed the earthquake of October 21, gave an exaggerated estimate of the number of lives lost, 15,000 being reported, it seems that the number was later reduced altogether too much. Latest advices report that only seventy persons escaped and 3,400 perished, instead of 200 as given in these columns last week.

— Negotiations were opened last summer between the State Department and Ambassador Jusserand, of France, for a commercial agreement by which France was to receive the benefit of a twenty-per-cent reduction of tariff on wines in return for preferential rates upon a list of about 100 articles, including shoes, tools, and machinery, but no definite results have as yet been obtained. A recent action of the French government, which virtually prevents any further commercial arrangements until parliament passes upon the proposed revision of the tariff of 1892, seems to preclude any chance of agreement between the representatives of the two governments. France regards the concessions asked of her as disproportionate to what is offered.

— November 1 Japan began entrusting the transportation of the Japan-Peking mails to the care of the Chinese posts, which is an outcome of China’s coercive action in refusing Japan the use of the imperial railways for her mail couriers. China’s action was induced by Japan’s postal aggressions, her independent post-office service in China having been trebled in two years, and also to France’s attempted re-establishment of couriers from Yunnan, where the Indo-China post has been operated since 1901. It is yet uncertain if France will withdraw her Indo-China post couriers, who have been operating for a fortnight. The Chinese are sincerely alarmed at the undeviating, correlated aggressions of Japan and her allies, and many Chinese are forming a distinct idea that Japan is China’s prime menace.

— The temperance issue seems to be coming to the front in different places in the country. At the recent election in Illinois sixteen counties voted for prohibition at the first test of the new local option law. In Mississippi, Edmond F. Noel, who is pledged to the prohibition cause, was elected governor; and so many of the counties of Tennessee have voted for prohibition under the local option law, that it is no longer necessary to maintain such a large force of revenue collectors. The two revenue districts are to be consolidated, and there will be a reduction of from twenty-five to forty per cent in the working force. The temperance issue made the recent election in Delaware the most exciting ever held. Women and children crowded around the polls, and tried to induce the men to vote for no license. About half the State voted this way.