NEWS AND NOTES

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Dec 18, 1900

FromReview and Herald, Vol. 77, No. 51.

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— Lord Roberts will reach London, January 2.

— Gen. W. R. Shafter will be retired next July.

— December 11, a pro-Boer meeting in London, England, was prohibited.

— The third telegraphic cable between the Netherlands and England is now being laid.

— The Standard Oil Company has just acquired all the interests of the Pacific Oil Company.

— The annual report of Secretary Gage shows a surplus for the fiscal year of 1900 of $79,527,066.

— President and Mrs. Mc Kinley gave a reception, December 6, to 1,000 delegates to the W. C. T. U. convention held in Washington.

— The telegraph operators on the Santa Fé Railroad are on a strike, and operators on the Missouri Pacific threaten to strike, in sympathy.

— Professor Parker, head of the music department of Yale University, has sued a New Haven, Conn., daily paper for $6,000 damages for a lost manuscript on church music.

— The Bulgarian Cabinet has resigned, because of political differences.

— Rev. Dr. Joseph Parker will edit the London (England) Sun the week before Christmas.

— Queen Wilhelmina received Mr. Kruger at The Hague, but only as a private individual.

— The annual revenue of the British government in India, from the opium traffic, is $15,000,000.

— The Dutch government refuses to take the initiative in behalf of arbitration between Great Britain and the Transvaal.

— The Salvation Army of New York City will give a Christmas dinner to 25,000 poor persons, in Madison Square Garden.

— Hon. Wm. Wirt Henry, a distinguished member of the Virginia bar, and grandson of Patrick Henry, died December 5.

— Li Hung Chang’s secretary, Yiko, is under arrest, by Count Waldersee’s order, charged with communicating with the Boxers.

— Twenty-three Boer families will arrive in New York the 28th inst., the first of a colony to be established on Long Island, near Hicksville.

— Foreign dispatches say that “the Boxers are disturbing northern and western Korea, and the Russian troops are preparing to scatter them.”

— The centennial anniversary of the establishment of the seat of government in the District of Columbia was celebrated in Washington, December 12.

— The death of Oscar Booz, of Bristol, Pa., December 5, is said to be due to brutal hazing while he was a student at West Point Military Academy.

— It has been necessary to re-enforce the American garrison on the Island of Bohol, Philippine Islands, because of the increased rebel activity there.

— Representative Kitchin, of North Carolina, recently introduced a resolution in Congress to repeal the Fifteenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States.

— A detachment of 130 bluejackets from the United States cruiser “Dixie,” attended service at St. Peter’s, at Rome, December 8, and were “specially blessed by the pope.”

— Queen Victoria has appointed, as British members of the International Court of Arbitration, Lord Pauncefote, Sir Edward Malet, the Right Hon. Sir Edward Fry, and Prof. John Westlake.

— Ernest Brenner has been elected president of Switzerland, succeeding E. Müller, who was elected Dec. 21, 1898. He is only forty-four years old, and yet “is deemed one of the ablest of the international lawyers of Europe.” He is a native of the canton of Basel, and has served several terms in the national Bundesrath. It is interesting to note that “the president of Switzerland is elected every year from the Bundesrath, in rotation. He must first serve as vice-president of that body.” The president’s salary is less than $3,000 a year, while his power is very limited. He can not even appoint cabinet officers.

— At the national convention of the W. C. T. U., held in Washington, D. C., December 3-6, the following amendment to the constitution of that organization “was rejected by a vote of 312 to 15:’ ‘ARTICLE VI.—PLANS OF WORK.—Nothing shall ever be incorporated into any plan of N. W. C. T. U. work, by department or otherwise, which must of necessity become the occasion of sectarian controversy, or which can in any sense be made to interfere with perfect liberty of conscience.’” By referring to the REVIEW of Nov. 14, 1899, it will be seen that this was the amendment proposed by the late Mrs. S. M. I. Henry at the N. W. C. T. U. convention last year. Thus that organization gives its sanction to the prosecution of all seventh-day observers under the Sunday laws.

— By a vote of sixty-five to seventeen the United States Senate adopted the Davis amendment to the Hay-Pauncefote Pact regarding the Nicaraguan Canal, December 13. Washington dispatches state that “in all probability the Hay-Pauncefote treaty is beaten. If the United States builds the Nicaraguan Canal, it will be an American canal, and foreign consent will not be asked as to its control or the means adopted for its defense,” and “the Senate is determined to revise the treaty in an American spirit, to make it a compact which will suit America, but will not suit Great Britain, and thus throw upon the latter country the responsibility for its rejection.” And again: “If Great Britain refuses to accept the amended treaty, the Senate and House of Representatives will almost instantly, and by a large majority, pass a resolution directly and formally abrogating the old Clayton-Bulwer convention. And that will be the end of it, and the United States may go ahead and build the canal under any rules that it may see fit to adopt.”

— General Mercier, in a recent debate in the French Senate, pointed out “the ease with which England could be invaded.”

— The Suez Canal is ninety-two miles long, and it costs from $1 to $1.50 a ton, according to the tonnage, for a ship to pass through. It cost $80,000,000 to make the canal.

— The United States transport “Hancock” arrived in San Francisco, the 11th inst., with the bodies of 1,500 sailors and soldiers who died in the Philippines, China, Guam, and Hawaii.

— The German members of the International Court of Arbitration will be Dr. Bingner, President of the Senate of the High Court; Herr von Frantzius, Councilor of the Foreign Office; and Professor von Bar, of the University of Göttingen.