Current Mention

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Washington, D.C. · Mar 8, 1906

— Prominent among the disasters of 1906 will be the tornado at Meridian, Miss., March 2. Nineteen persons were killed, twenty-four injured, and $1,000,000 loss in property was sustained.

— News of a great catastrophe in the Society Islands is received from Tahiti. The report states that a cyclone devastated the Society and Tuamotu groups February 7, 8, causing the loss of many lives, and the destruction of property worth millions of dollars.

— Great concern is felt at Trondhjem, Norway, for the lives of 800 fishermen who were off that port March 2, when a very severe storm swept down upon the fishing fleet, which it is feared destroyed the greater part of it.

— The famine in the northern part of Japan is said to be the worst known there within sixty years. A Tokyo dispatch says: “A population greater than that of Chicago is subsisting on roots, straw, and the barks of trees. Thousands of them, especially among the women and children, have died of starvation, and they are dying by hundreds every day.”

— A London dispatch makes this comment on the results toward disarmament accomplished by the establishment of The Hague peace conference: “In introducing the navy estimates in the House of Commons to-day, Financial Secretary of the Admiralty Robertson commented on the fact that since The Hague peace conference the naval expenditure of the great powers had increased fifty per cent, reaching the enormous total of $507,500,000. He regarded this inflated expenditure as a menace to the peace of the world, and thought that a league of peace was desirable.”

— A bill to legalize lynching has been introduced in the Mississippi Legislature by State Senator McLaurin, which is said to be favorably viewed by other members of the legislature. It provides that lynching shall not be regarded as murder, nor as assault with intent to murder; that no punishment shall be meted to one convicted of lynching except such as the trial jury may prescribe, and that testimony relative to the crime committed by the person lynched shall be admissible as evidence for the defendant at the trial. This would make a trial for lynching a farce, and would make lawlessness lawful in that State.

— Organization for the purpose of raising prices is appearing in the domain of agriculture, and we now hear of a great farmers’ trust to control the price of wheat and other farm products. An Indianapolis telegram of recent date mentioned a farmers’ organization numbering 200,000 members, which proposes a strike that will withdraw from the market all agricultural products save those the price of which can be dictated by the association. It is stated that “the word is passing through all the wheat-growing States, and the response that is returned is said to be causing considerable concern on the part of the marketmen and speculators. The society of equity says that the producer ought to get at least one dollar a bushel for wheat, no matter what may be the size of the crop. The call for the strike sets forth a minimum selling price on all farm products.”

— The cause of the attack by a Chinese mob upon Catholic and Protestant missionaries at Nanchang, in which several of the missionaries were killed, is given as follows in a Shanghai dispatch: “Fifteen Methodists, twelve English Protestants, and fourteen French Catholic missionaries were in the city last Thursday night, when the French Catholics had a quarrel with an official over a suit for the possession of property. Great excitement prevailed on Friday. A mass-meeting was held on Saturday, and was followed on Sunday by a riot, during which the property of the Catholics was burned. The cause of the riot was local. Serious blame attaches to the French Catholics. Chinese, friendly to the missionaries, object to priests exercising civil functions.” If so-called Christian missionaries would act like Christians, and not quarrel about property with those they have come to teach the better way, and would not unite the functions of church and state by claiming the office of a civil magistrate, there would be fewer massacres, and fewer missionaries would be killed.