Current Mention

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Washington, D.C. · Feb 18, 1904

— The big starch factory at Oswego, N. Y., was destroyed by fire, February 10, involving a money loss of about $1,000,000.

— News is brought by steamship of the existence of a rebellion and a state of anarchy in the Department of Bolivar, Colombia.

— Senator Mark Hanna is reported to be convalescent from a severe attack of typhoid fever, which at one time came very near a fatal termination.

— Five cases of trichinosis, a disease caused by eating worm-infected pork, are reported by the Springfield Republican, Springfield, Mass., as existing in that city.

— Nine persons were killed and about twenty others injured in a collision between passenger trains on the Canadian Pacific Railroad near Sand Point, Ontario, February 9.

— The insurrection in Santo Domingo has produced a condition bordering on anarchy in that country, which so seriously affects the interests of citizens of the United States that the latter government may interfere to restore order.

— Railway companies east of the Mississippi interested in passenger traffic in connection with the St. Louis fair have reached an agreement which provides for a round-trip rate to the fair of eighty per cent of double the west-bound fare, these tickets being good from the date of purchase till the end of the fair. Sixty-day tickets at one and one-third fares will be sold on or after April 25. Tickets with return limit of ten days, from territory three hundred and fifty miles or less from St. Louis, will be sold for the west-bound fare, plus two dollars.

— Reports from the scene of hostilities between Japan and Russia state that the first successes of the war have been on the side of Japan. Several Russian war-ships were torpedoed and disabled in a night attack by Japanese torpedo boats at the entrance of Port Arthur, and two other Russian war-vessels were destroyed at Chemulpho. There have been numerous unconfirmed reports of other conflicts both by sea and land, but a strict censorship over the news is maintained by both of the combatants, so that authentic dispatches from the arena of the war are comparatively few.

— The United States has taken the lead of the great world powers in a plan to preserve the neutrality of China, which is threatened by the Russo-Japanese war, and restrict as much as possible the area of hostilities. Secretary Hay has addressed a note to the European powers suggesting that representations be made by them to Russia and Japan with the view of securing from these belligerent powers a recognition of the neutrality of “the administrative entity” of China, which term is explained to mean the Chinese government. This action by the United States occasioned some excitement and speculation in Europe, particularly in France, but it is explained that it did not contemplate coercive action by the powers against Russia or Japan. The latter country has given its assent to the proposition.