Perplexities and Distress.
There is a strange mixture of peace and turmoil, poverty and luxury, anxiety and carelessness, distress, perplexity, and threatenings of war in the world at the present time. With the exception of the Venezuelan trouble, the nations are outwardly at peace, but inwardly full of fears both from within and from without. While millions are seemingly care-free, disaster and calamity are rampant in the earth, and the nations are bickering and struggling for every possible advantage almost to the verge of hostilities. Storms are threshing the earth in the fury of their power on both sides of the Atlantic and Pacific. The following are some of the striking things that have come to our attention within the past few days: The destruction of a whole town in Russian Turkestan, in which over 4,000 persons lost their lives and the homes of those who escaped death were ruined, while the earth in that vicinity continues to tremble, and the homeless people shiver and freeze in the zero weather; bloody fighting has occurred in Bostoff, Russia, between strikers and troops, in which 300 are reported to have been killed and 1,000 wounded, 2,000 women fighting with the strikers; 400,000 persons are reported starving in Finland as the result of the crop failure; there is widespread famine and destitution in European Russia and Siberia, and the government is spending several million dollars for relief; Anarchists have been at work with dynamite in Geneva, Switzerland; the rebellion in north China is reported spreading instead of decreasing, while the poor are suffering from the famine and from the depredations of the imperial soldiery as well as from the rebels; the government of Colombia is threatening war on Nicaragua; France is pressing Peru energetically for a settlement of a claim of long standing; the Venezuelan rebels are reported to be about to capture the capital, their present activity adding much to the present difficulty of the Castro government; Germany and England are protesting against America's commercial attitude in the Philippines; a rebellion is in progress in Morocco; the common people of Ireland are stirred over the large number of evictions; and in this land of peace and plenty many are suffering greatly from scarcity of fuel. It is not a peaceful or promising outlook.