p. 21 | Current Mention

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Aug 23, 1906

Current Mention

—The New York State Superintendent of Insurance has made public the results of his investigations regarding fire losses in the San Francisco disaster. This shows that the total amount of insurance involved by all companies was $222,836,307. The amount of salvage was $33,814,468, and the amount of reinsurance, $65,246,771, making the actual net loss to the companies $132,823,067.

—It is learned in connection with the recent attempt to assassinate Grand Duke Nicholas Nicholaievitch, of Russia, while he was watching the rifle practise of the imperial guards, at Frasnoe Selo, that a number of guards, who were supposed to have been using blank cartridges, had been supplied with ball cartridges. The affair was a deep-laid plot, in which many civilians were implicated. A number of plotters have been arrested.

—It is reported that absolutism has come to an end in Persia. The shah's rescript to the grand vizier, as finally amended, orders the formation of a national consultative assembly, composed of representatives of all classes, from the princes downward. The assembly will advise the shah of important state and public affairs, and will propose reforms conducive to the welfare of the people. Justice will be administered in accordance with the sacred law. Unlike Russia, the reform spirit in Persia was first manifested among the clergy, who formerly were reactionists. The announcement of the granting of a national assembly was received with great rejoicing throughout Persia.

—Thirty attorneys and traffic managers of the Southern railroads were in conference at Atlantic City, N. J., last week about the railroad rate bill. The statement was made that the conference concluded that the bill was a tangle of words, conflicting in its regulations, and impossible of satisfactory adoption. The railroad men, it is alleged, mean to resist its acceptance by the railroads, and show by their efforts that it will not achieve the results its framers intended it should bring about to help the shipper and the railroads. The recommendations will be sent to Northern railroads.

—Acting apparently with a definite plan and at a signal, the terrorists and the revolutionists made murderous attacks with bombs and revolvers on the police and troops in various cities in Poland, on Wednesday of last week. The revolutionist campaign flamed out with especial virulence at Warsaw, where over a score were slain in the streets, and many more were wounded. Among the killed, according to the official advices, were two sergeants of police, eight patrolmen, three gendarmes, five soldiers, a Hebrew merchant, and a woman. Policemen and soldiers were shot down like rabbits in the streets. Their assailants, who traveled in small bands, almost all escaped among the terrorized, but sympathetic, populace. The murderous daring of the Terrorists reached its climax at Plotsk, a town about fifty-eight miles northwest of Warsaw, where, at a preconcerted signal, every policeman on the streets was killed or wounded. Reports from all over the country show the absolute helplessness of the police to cope with the revolutionists.

—The Secretary of the Navy, Charles J. Bonaparte, in a recent address at the Allegany Chautauqua near Cumberland, Md., recommended death as a punishment for anarchists. He declared that "anarchism is the product of two conditions, which prevail, to a greater or less extent, everywhere among the less enlightened classes of modern civilized society; namely, the decay of religious faith, and a measure of superficial, and, therefore, unsound, popular education." He also said that "any dissemination of anarchistic literature and the publication of anarchistic doctrines, whether by speech or writing, ought to be made and punished as a crime." He expressed his views on the question of punishment in these words: "On anarchists the death penalty should be unequivocally imposed by law, and inflexibly executed whenever the prisoner has sought, directly or indirectly, to take life. For offenses of less gravity, I advise a comparatively brief, but very vigorous imprisonment, characterized by complete seclusion, deprivation of all comfort, and denial of any form of distraction, and which could be, to my mind, advantageously supplemented by a severe, but not a public, whipping. The lash, of all punishments, most clearly shows the culprit that he suffers for what his fellow men hold odious and disgraceful, and not merely for reasons of public policy." This address has attracted considerable attention.