p. 22 | Current Mention

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Washington, D.C. · Mar 10, 1904

Current Mention

— Trackless trains are being run in the streets of Paris. The first train of this kind consisted of a motor carriage similar to an automobile, and five cars.

— A large section of Oklahoma was swept by a prairie fire, March 2, Comanche and Kiowa Counties sustaining the chief damage. Many villages were destroyed, and three lives were lost. The property loss is estimated at about $500,000.

— Serious rioting is reported from the interior provinces of Russia, of such a character as to give rise to reports of an impending revolution. “Starving rustics,” it is said, “maddened by the excessive use of vodka, or Russian rye whisky, are plundering estates and burning outlying homesteads, murdering landowners in all directions.”

— Three soldiers were killed and two more made fatally ill at New London, Conn., by drinking wood alcohol, which they obtained at the military barber shop. They were told that the alcohol was a deadly poison, but would not believe it. It is reported that since the abolition of the army canteen, the men have been drinking almost anything they could get that contained alcohol in any form.

— By the collapse of the steel framework of a hotel which was being erected in New York City, March 2, fifteen workmen were killed and many others injured. Adjoining buildings were damaged, a woman who was dining in one of them being killed. Ten stories of the framework had been erected. The accident was due to gross negligence on the part of the builders.

— A serious epidemic of typhoid fever exists in the city of Cleveland, Ohio. During the month of February there have been 465 cases and forty-five deaths, according to official returns. A similar epidemic threatens the city of Philadelphia, where there are now an average of thirty new cases per day.

— Attorney-General Knox has advised President Roosevelt that no legal barrier remains to the completion of the deal with Panama regarding the construction of the canal, the principal items in which will be the payment of $10,000,000 to the Panama republic, and $40,000,000 to the French company from whose hands the canal project is taken by the United States.

— The cause of woman suffrage is put at some disadvantage by facts which are coming to light in Colorado, where women are permitted to vote, revealing what are called “outrageous election frauds” in recent elections in that State. “The most unfortunate feature of it,” remarks the Pittsburg Christian Advocate, “is that the women, who vote there, did not exert the expected refining influence, but some of them were as deeply concerned in the crookedness as any of the men.”

— Discussion of a bill brought before the Massachusetts Legislature to restrict vivisection in that State, called out some sensational testimony on the subject, March 2, it being alleged that vivisection is practised in Boston not only on brutes, but upon children as well. Mr. Herbert Ward read from an article published in the Boston Medical and Surgical Journal in 1896, describing about forty “experiments” made on living children, consisting of puncturing the spinal cord; the experiment being followed by death in a number of cases.

— Turkey has refused permission to the Russian Black Sea fleet to pass the Dardanelles, presumably having been pressed to this refusal by some of the European powers. The Russian fleet at Port Arthur appears to be either locked in the harbor or too seriously crippled to be of use against the enemy, and that at Vladivostok is blockaded by a Japanese fleet. Thus Japan seems to have full control of the sea bordering the scene of military operations. Both Port Arthur and Vladivostok are in a state of siege. A Shanghai dispatch states that “confidence is growing that the war will shortly involve China. Troops and money are being steadily drafted northward.”

— M. Hanotaux, ex-minister of foreign affairs of the French republic, in an article contributed to a French journal on the far Eastern policy of the United States, characterizes that policy as being one of the most noteworthy features of the present time. The president of the United States, he says, “is precipitating in all directions such territorial occupations as he deems indispensable, evidently by virtue of a prearranged plan.” In the present foreign policy of the United States the ex-minister sees “the creation of settlements and stations for provisioning the approaches to the great highway of the New World, as England has done for the great highway of the Old World. It is all being done openly, and it justifies the conclusion that the policy of intervention as regards the future destinies of the Pacific Ocean is in favor at the White House.”