News and Notes

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Jun 18, 1901

FromReview and Herald, Vol. 78, No. 25.

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—Viscount Katsura has organized a new Japanese Cabinet.

—Parliamentary elections are now in progress in Holland.

—A cadet at the Naval Academy, Annapolis, Md., was recently dismissed for hazing.

—The Portland gold mine, Cripple Creek, Colo., has been sold to a London firm for $21,000,000.

—The commonwealth of Australia is seriously contemplating the undertaking of its own coinage.

—Over thirty miners of Port Royal, Pa., are confined in a burning mine at that place. They cannot be rescued.

—During the past eleven months 40,000 names have been added to the pension rolls of the United States government.

—The number of bubonic plague cases at Cape Town, South Africa, averages ten a day, and many Europeans are leaving the place.

—Captain Blackburn started the 9th inst., on his transatlantic trip, from Gloucester, Mass., in his twenty-five-foot sloop “The Great Republic.”

—A Belfast, Ireland, mob recently hooted a Corpus Christi procession of 8,000 persons, in that city. Many persons were injured in the riot.

—It is rumored that Mr. Cortelyou, secretary to President McKinley, will succeed Charles Emory Smith as postmaster-general of the United States.

—Queen Wilhelmina, of Holland, recently made an appeal to Emperor William, of Germany, for him to make use of his influence, to end the war in South Africa.

—The steamship “Assyrian,” of the Leyland Line, ran ashore off Cape Race, Newfoundland, the 6th inst., and in all probability will be a total loss. No lives were lost.

—The United States has asked the Powers to “submit the present issues at Peking [China] over the indemnity propositions, to the arbitration of The Hague tribunal.”

—The discussion of the Algerian question in the French Chamber of Deputies, on the 14th inst., led to a riot. Troops were obliged to come in and eject members of the opposition, for denouncing the government.

—According to London papers, “Christian science is all the vogue among people of wealth and fashion in England, particularly in the metropolis and the two ancient university towns” of Cambridge and Oxford.

—Now that the Turkish government has just paid to the French embassy 20,000 pounds, “the balance of the compensation demanded for French losses during Armenian massacres,” the United States is making another strenuous effort to obtain its indemnity.

—There are 3,828 millionaires in the United States. These men own $16,000,000,000 of the $81,750,000,000 at which the entire property of the United States is valued. In short, one person out of every 20,000 controls about one fifth of the wealth of this nation.

—Sir Walter Besant, the noted author, died at London, the 9th inst., at noon. His death was caused by internal gout, aggravated by spasmodic attacks of asthma. He was born Aug. 14, 1836, at Portsmouth, England, the birthplace of Charles Dickens. He was a friend of the poor.

—Chinese dispatches, based upon an imperial edict, state that “owing to the hot weather and the advanced age of the empress dowager, the return of the court to Peking has been postponed to September 1, which astrologers announce to be a lucky day on which to begin a journey.”

—Judge Tuthill, of the Chicago juvenile court, has “decided to commit to public institutions for medical treatment in cases of serious illness, children whose parents place them under faith-cure treatment. He distinguishes between children and adults, holding that while adults are at liberty to choose their own means of cure, children are entitled to the kind of medical service which they need, according to generally accepted notions.”

—The Filipinos still keep up the fight against the Americans.

—Anarchist uprisings are rife at Barcelona and other Spanish cities.

—It takes $300,000,000 per annum to support the churches of the United States.

—Germany and Holland will together lay a new cable to the Dutch East Indies.

—Cyclones, wind, and electric storms are sweeping over the land and doing great damage.

—Edward VII has decreed that all divorced women must be excluded from court functions.

—China is preparing bonds for the payment of the great indemnity demanded of her by the Powers.

—Five French fishing boats in Iceland waters are given up as lost. Number of men in the various crews, 117.

—During the month of May there died among the British troops in South Africa twenty-five officers and 709 men.

—Dispatches from Peking state that fifteen Roman Catholic priests have been recently massacred in southern Mongolia. That means more trouble for poor China.

—Robert Buchanan, author, poet, and dramatist, died at London, the 10th inst., in the morning. He was born Aug. 18, 1841, in Scotland. He was a severe chastiser of immoral literature.

—New York dispatches state that the rector of St. Andrew’s Roman Catholic church, of that city, has begun “a series of services for newspaper men, which are held at 2:30 in the morning. At one service 700 men were present, including telegraph operators and post-office employees, as well as journalists.”

—The National Cash Register Company, Dayton, Ohio, has re-opened its plant, the molders’ union having yielded and given up their strike, which was based upon “the refusal of the company to reinstate five molders who had been discharged because there was nothing for them to do.” Over 2,000 persons are employed in that model factory.

—It was certainly a great compliment to the troops of the United States in China, when 5,600 residents of Peking petitioned General Chaffee to keep his troops in that city. In the words of the Episcopal Recorder, “That the people of a country, entirely loyal to that country, should petition an invading army to remain in it, is something new in history.”

—John Wanamaker recently bid $2,500,000 for the street railway franchises of Philadelphia. This he did simply to show the folly of the contemplated gift of these valuable privileges to private concerns, on the part of the city council. Mr. Wanamaker does not want the franchise, but he says it is worth much more than the $2,500,000 he offers, in order to open the eyes of the people.

—Fear of annexation to the United States led the Cubans to accept, on the 12th inst., the Platt amendment “just as it stands.” It has therefore been added to the Cuban Constitution, by the Cuban Constitutional Convention, the vote being sixteen to eleven. The dispatches state that “many Spaniards, Cubans, and Americans hoped that the amendment would be rejected, and thus, perhaps, annexation would come about. This thought weighed powerfully with the convention.” But suppose annexation comes anyway?

—Governor Odell, of New York, reviewed the Brooklyn Sunday-school parade on the 6th inst., 20,000 children being in the ranks, in twenty divisions. No Roman Catholic children were in the parade, while the Hebrew children were represented by a delegation. Commenting upon the event, the Springfield Republican says: “The propriety of the official presence of the governor on such an occasion, must rest on the future citizenship of the children, and is a recognition of the value of religious teaching in that citizenship.” It further characterizes the function as “a rather curious link between Church and State.”

—The police of Paris, France, have just delivered from an incarceration of twenty-five years in the house of her mother, Mlle. Blanche Monnier. The girl fell in love with a poor lawyer, twenty-five years ago, and for that reason was confined by her mother to her room. When discovered by the police, she was “shut up in a room, in darkness, lying on a mattress, stark naked, and so emaciated that she appeared to be a living skeleton. The room was covered with filth, bones, refuse, food, worms, rats, and all kinds of vermin.” The unfortunate woman had partially lost her reason, but is now improving. The wretched mother died in her cell, immediately after her arrest.

—A recent fire destroyed 652 houses in Brest, Poland.

—Disease is killing more British soldiers in South Africa than are the Boers.

—According to the recent British census, the rate of Irish emigration is less than one half that of 1883.

—William H. Newman, president of the Lake Shore Railroad, was recently elected president of the New York Central.

—The next thing in order for the Cubans is the enactment of an electoral law, and the election of a president and a congress.

—Great Britain will hereafter send her Boer prisoners to Bermuda, the governor of that island having been notified that 900 of them would arrive about July 3.

—Italian dispatches state that “peasants in the provinces of Messina, Catania, and Syracuse, are in revolt, and strikes are extending everywhere in southern Italy.”

—A Chicago association has been formed for the purpose of erecting “a $100,000 temple to the memory of Robert G. Ingersoll,” and to “perpetuate his teachings.”

—The new United States battle-ship “Illinois” proves itself the swiftest war-ship in the navy, its average sustained speed on its trial trip being 17.31 nautical miles an hour.

—The Philippine Commission has decided that “native jurists are unsatisfactory,” and that “places on the bench shall be filled by appointment from the United States.” The Manila lawyers protest against this action.

—The Turkish sultan has once more promised to pay the American claims. It is difficult to keep track of the number of times the United States has endeavored to collect its indemnity from “the unutterable Turk.”

—The United States will not send its minister to Venezuela “until there is a change in the attitude of the government of that country.” A chargé d’affaires will, in the meantime, look after the interests of this country there.

—The mayor of Madrid, Spain, has issued an order that “all inebriates arrested for drunkenness on the second offense shall have their hair and beards cut off once every four weeks, as a mark of disgrace and punishment.”

—And now it is the turn of the Swiss people to be afraid of J. Pierpont Morgan, the American millionaire; for it is reported that he contemplates the formation in the United States of “a watch trust to stop the importation of Swiss watches and materials.”

—Mrs. Florence Maybrick, the rich American prisoner in London, England, who has tried so long to be released from the alleged charge of murdering her husband, is still in prison. It is hard to get out of the clutches of British justice (or possibly in this case, injustice).

—As the result of British machinations, “the proposed Russian loan of from 15,000,000 to 20,000,000 rubles to Persia, has fallen through, because the shah would not give the required security and grant the privileges requested in south Persia.” But Russia will get Persia, in spite of this seeming balk.

—Count Romanones, the Spanish minister of education, has “asserted the freedom of scientific research, and condemned the doctrine of the obscurantist syllabus of Pope Pius IX, that liberalism is sin.” He holds that such ideas “darken the glory of science by the shadow of fanatic zeal,” and declares that, so long as he holds his present office, “scholarship shall be independent and research free.”

—President McKinley declines a third presidential term, in the following words sent from the White House the 10th inst.: “I regret that the suggestion of a third term has been made. I doubt whether I am called upon to give it notice. But there are now questions of the gravest importance before the administration and the country, and their just consideration should not be prejudiced in the public mind by even the suspicion of the thought of a third term. In view, therefore, of the reiteration of the suggestion of it, I will say now, once for all, expressing a long-settled conviction, that I not only am not and will not be a candidate for a third term, but would not accept a nomination for it if it were tendered me. My only ambition is to serve through my second term to the acceptance of my countrymen, whose generous confidence I so deeply appreciate, and then, with them, to do my duty in the ranks of private citizenship.” But other American pledges, even those of Congress, are easily broken nowadays.