Current Mention

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Washington, D. C. · Oct 6, 1904

— The Mexican cotton boll-weevil has made its appearance in cotton fields in Georgia.

— New York City health authorities report that the severest epidemic of typhoid fever in the city's history is now threatened there.

— Russia will enter a protest against the treaty recently concluded between Tibet and Great Britain, which amounts to a virtual protectorate by the latter power over Tibet.

— A report from London says that the problem of aerial navigation has “probably” been solved by Sir Hiram Maxim, who has invented a flying-machine which resembles a gigantic swallow.

— Going at high speed around a curve caused the derailment of a passenger-train on the Iron Mountain road near Sadula, Mo., September 27. Thirty-four passengers were injured, but by a seeming miracle there were no fatalities.

— Secretary Hay is reported to be sounding the world powers on the subject of convening another world peace congress at The Hague at an early date. Russia is said to have replied that the present time is inopportune for such a gathering.

— Labor federations are not all enjoying prosperity these days. According to Secretary Nockels, of the Chicago Federation of Labor, that organization has lost 100,000 of its members in the last two years. Its present membership is 140,000.

— Recent seismic disturbances which have caused noticeable changes in the earth's surface are reported from Tacoma, Wash. Several landslips have occurred, the level has been lowered in two Washington lakes, and in one of the lakes two small islands have been formed.

— A radical change in the nature of the marriage contract is advocated by a well-known English novelist, George Meredith. He predicts that the marriage contract of the future will be so drawn as to expire by limitation, being terminable not only by death, but by the mere lapse of a fixed period of time, say ten years. Such ideas are indicative of the moral laxity of the times.

— The local board of steamboat inspectors of New York City has made a report on the “Slocum” disaster of last June, in which they exonerate themselves, and charge the catastrophe upon the crew of the ill-fated boat. The survivors of the disaster held a meeting after this report was received, and denounced the inspectors as being largely responsible for the event. Recently a batch of “life-preservers” made by a Camden, N. J., firm, were found by government inspectors to contain iron bars put in to make the preservers of legal weight.

— It is the reported intention of the Panama Canal Commission to recommend to the government that the canal be made a sea-level one, a way having been discovered by the engineers to divert the Chagres River into the Pacific Ocean. This can be done at a cost of $16,000,000, leaving $20,000,000 free to be spent in excavating the canal, out of the $36,000,000 set aside in the estimates for the construction of canal locks.

— News of a threatened revolutionary movement in China comes from Peking. A telegram from that city says: “Foreigners lately have been much preoccupied, owing to the growing unrest in the southern part of Chili province and Shantung and Hunan provinces. They were informed at the offices of the foreign board that the agitation is largely revolutionary and anti-dynastic, thus differing from the Boxer movement of 1900, which was chiefly anti-foreign.”

— Two eminent statesmen, Hon. George Frisbie Hoar, United States senator from Massachusetts, and Sir William Vernon Harcourt, for many years a prominent figure in the Parliament of Great Britain, are among those whom death has claimed since our last issue. Another eminent American Postmaster-General Payne, is at this writing so seriously ill that his recovery is not expected. Lady Curzon, wife of the viceroy of India, is believed to have passed the crisis of her illness.

— The lull in the fighting between the Russian and Japanese forces in Manchuria continues, though the outposts of the opposing armies are still in touch. Re-enforcements are being sent forward by both Russia and Japan. Reports have come from Port Arthur stating that the garrison is running short of both food and ammunition, and that the water-supply has been cut off by the besiegers. The Japanese are maintaining a strict blockade, having apparently concluded to rely more on this means for success than upon the costly assaults which have marked the progress of the siege hitherto.

— Buddhists in China and Mongolia are calling for a “holy war” to establish a Buddhist kingdom, according to St. Petersburg dispatches, one of which says: “According to information which has been drifting eastward from the depths of Mongolia, the agitation for a holy war noted at the time of the pilgrimage to Ourga, in July last, continues. Wandering lamas are spreading the agitation not only among the Buddhists in Mongolia, but among the followers of Buddha in the Altai region of Central China, among the Russian Buriats, and even beyond the Siberian borders, and in India. According to reports at Ourga there is a general agitation among the Buddhists in favor of freeing themselves from the domination of China, some of them favoring the removal of the dalai-lama to northern Mongolia, and entering on a holy war for the establishment of a Buddhist kingdom, while others are appealing

for the protection of Russia. What effect the British expedition to Tibet and the deposition of the dalai-lama will have on the movement, is the subject of much speculation.”

— The Law and Order League of Lexington, Ky., is creating much disorder in that city by an attempt at a rigid enforcement of the Kentucky Sunday law. Beginning with October 1, all forms of secular work in the city were ordered suspended on Sunday, including livery stables, milk wagons, ice wagons, barber shops, and all kinds of markets, and the newspaper offices were notified that prosecution would follow any Sunday work by the employees there. The newspaper publishers and the liverymen began a fight against the crusade so far as it touches them, by getting an injunction restraining the city and chief of police from interference with their business, and many other lines of business have announced an intention of fighting the law. A grand jury to which the Law and Order League appealed drew up indictments against the mayor, chief of police, and the police commissioners. It is evident that if this crusade is enforced by the police as rigidly as the Law and Order League intends, very much of the energy of the police department will be dissipated in the work of spying out and bringing to court the many individuals who will be doing more or less secular work or indulging in various forms of worldliness on Sunday, leaving the really criminal element in the city more free to accomplish their nefarious designs.