Current Mention

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Washington, D. C. · May 3, 1906

— The Russian Imperial Council has announced that the cost of the war with Japan is 1,066,600 rubles, or about $1,000,000,000. This is almost double the cost of the Russo-Turkish War.

— The latest reported incident in the terrorist regime of the Russian revolutionaries is the assassination of the chief of police of Odessa. The assassins did their work in broad daylight. Other minor assassinations are reported.

— Pierre Curie, who achieved fame as the discoverer of the wonderful element, radium, met an unfortunate and untimely end recently in the streets of Paris, being knocked down and run over by a dray. His death is greatly deplored in scientific circles.

— The case of J. M. Searle, superintendent of the Southern Railway, against the State of Georgia, which was brought before the United States Supreme Court on a writ of error to test the validity of the Georgia Sunday law prohibiting the running of Sunday freight-trains, has been dismissed by the court for want of jurisdiction. The case was brought before the court on the ground that the Sunday law was repugnant to the federal constitution.

— The recent seizure by Turkey of Tabah, which is at the head of the Gulf of Akabah, has involved that government in a dispute with Great Britain, which controls Egypt. The Egyptian government asked the porte for an explanation of the act, and Turkey in reply claimed that the town was within Turkish territory. Great Britain protested, and the controversy has reached a point where it is said that England will coerce Turkey if the latter does not recede from her position.

— The French government is taking energetic measures to quell any revolutionary outbreak in that country, and the outlook is somewhat less dark than it has been. Processions and street demonstrations on May 1 have been forbidden.

The Paris Figaro says concerning the situation and the coming elections: “The coming elections will have decisive importance. It is no longer a courteous struggle between parties divided by mere shades of political opinion. The question now is to decide whether society is to be saved, or whether it is to perish amid the horrors of anarchy.”

— Political affairs in Russia are still in a chaotic condition, and bid fair to continue so for an indefinite time to come. Recently the executive committees of the St. Petersburg Social Democrats and Social Revolutionists were arrested by the police while holding a secret session. The members of these bodies are greatly enraged at this action, and have been making dire threats. A congress of monarchists has been in session at Moscow, during which it adopted a series of extremely reactionary resolutions, declaring that the new parliament is not representative of Russian public opinion, and pronouncing itself in favor of treating Jews as foreigners, and excluding them from all rights. The proceedings closed with a speech by Professor Nicholsky, a noted reactionary, in which he prophesied a counter-revolution, to restore the old regime, which would cost the lives of 5,000,000 Jews and Constitutional Democrats.

— Although Mt. Vesuvius has quieted down to its normal state, the elements continue the work of destruction caused by the eruption, and make more hopeless the prospects of the unfortunate residents in its vicinity. Streams of mud, caused by heavy rains, are flowing down the mountainside and engulfing the towns which were spared by the volcano, the natural water channels which formerly existed having been filled up by the down-flowing lava. A dispatch from Naples says: “Among the people to-day was seen the calmness of despair. There were no ravings or terror, but the despair which weakens the will and removes the desire to do anything. About thirty houses which were almost submerged, but have not yet fallen, may be saved if the rains are not repeated; but if the downpour starts again, preparations have been made to blow them up with dynamite in order to prevent a worse disaster.”

— A London dispatch states the following regarding the decimation by disease which is in progress among the natives of India and Africa: “Medical science seems powerless to stem the progress of two terrible scourges, the plague and the sleeping sickness, or beriberi. During March, in India, the plague increased rapidly in every province, and reappeared in a district from which it was supposed to have been banished. Bengal has been reporting 5,000 deaths a week, and Calcutta had 40 deaths in one day in March. Bombay has 150 deaths every day. Matters are equally bad in the central provinces in spite of the splendid efforts to crush the disease by segregation, inoculation, etc. The sleeping sickness is proving equally deadly in tropical Africa, and has now reached the west shores of Lakes Mweru and Tanganyika, where the natives are dying by the thousands. British Central Africa is threatened, and there is every reason to fear the disease in time will reach the thickly populated country.”