p. 21 | Current Mention

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · May 19, 1903

Current Mention

—Through United States Consul McWade, at Canton, China, details have been received at Washington of a great famine in Kwangsi Province, China, by which 150,000 people have been reduced to starvation.

—A number of manufacturing plants in Chicago have decided to leave that city and locate in a smaller city, on account of the trouble and loss they have experienced from labor strikes in the Western metropolis.

—A dispatch from The Hague says it is announced that Finns of all classes have decided to issue an appeal on May 12 to the public opinion of all Western countries, in which they will protest against the violent measures of the Russian government that are being enforced in Finland.

—Satisfactory tests have recently been made of the giant sixteen-inch gun at Sandy Hook, which throws a shell weighing nearly a ton and a quarter, and has a range of about twenty miles. Smokeless powder is used, but to explode this about sixteen pounds of black rifle powder is necessary for each discharge.

—Conflicting reports of Russia’s intentions regarding the occupation of Manchuria continue to be published in the press dispatches, but it can safely be said that Russia has no intention of giving up her hold on China. At the same time Russia seems anxious to preserve friendly relations with the powers, and especially to maintain her traditional attitude of friendship for the United States.

—A Constantinople dispatch reports that thirteen Christians were killed and nineteen were wounded, and three Mussulmans were killed, during the recent outbreak at Monastir. In an encounter between imperial troops and a force of insurgents in the neighboring village of Zapari on May 6 eleven Bulgarians were killed, and seventy-four were made prisoners. There has been a wild panic in Monastir, Macedonia, since Thursday, when there was a series of dynamite explosions, followed by murderous street fights, in which women took part by the side of the men.

—It is believed at Rome that the recent visit of Emperor William to the pope was made for the purpose of attempting a reconciliation between the Vatican and the Italian government.

—According to a report issued by the Inter-State Commerce Commission, railway accidents in this country during the last three months of the year 1902 caused 266 deaths and bodily injury to 2,788 persons.

—A new malady known as the tropical worm disease has attacked 20,000 miners in Westphalia, Germany, and the government has sent a force of 150 doctors to combat it. The disease attacks those who rarely come above ground in their work, and is frequently fatal.

—The city of Valparaiso, Chile, was, on May 12, given over to a mob led by the striking dock laborers, which after a fierce fight with the police, in which many were killed and wounded, routed the latter, and held full possession of the city. The police were withdrawn and kept within their barracks, the authorities seeming to be powerless to check the disorder. Much damage was done to property in the city and harbor.

—The recent massacre of Jews at Kishinef, in southwest Russia, in which fifty persons were killed and several hundred severely injured, is largely due, it is said, to the economic conditions which have grown up there through the superior business capacity of the Jews, who have acquired control both of trade and of employment in all the larger towns. Reports of the massacre state that the most dreadful atrocities were perpetrated upon the victims, the city being given over to the rioters for nearly a week, the police and soldiers remaining passive spectators of the scenes.

—Evidence which has come to light in connection with the search for the maker of the dynamite bomb left on the Cunard pier in New York City to be placed on board the “Umbria,” affords reason for believing that the mysterious disappearance of the White Star steamship “Naronic,” which left Liverpool in February, 1893, carrying a crew of fifty-five men and fifteen passengers, and was never seen or heard from afterward, met its fate by means of a bomb exploded on the ship while at sea. The evidence consists of a note written in French, found among some effects left by the man who sent the bomb to the pier, containing the statement, “The destruction of the ‘Naronic’ was complete.”