News and Notes

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Mar 6, 1900

FromReview and Herald, Vol. 77, No. 10.

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— Italy is suffering from a scarcity of coal.

— Two grandsons of Li Hung Chang have entered Vanderbilt University.

— Eighty thousand persons in Berlin, Germany, are suffering from la grippe.

— Colorado is experiencing blizzards, which are piling the snow ten feet deep on railroads.

— Great Britain is said to be “massing her coal supply in reserve for an emergency.”

— An imperial edict offers 100,000 taels for the capture of the Chinese reformer Kang Yu Wei.

— An American syndicate, with a capital of $10,000,000, will erect a steel plant in Monterey, Mexico.

— A French factory has received an order for 150,000 artillery shells from the Transvaal government.

— The battleship “Texas” has been ordered to participate in the Mardi Gras festivities at New Orleans, La.

— At Battle Creek, Mich., a snowfall of fourteen inches in twenty-four hours occurred February 27, 28.

— The Indian Relief Association of Kansas has sent three car-loads of corn to Bombay, for the famine sufferers.

— It is said that “a British steamer loaded with wheat for South Africa was mysteriously wrecked off Philadelphia, February 21.”

— Heavy snowstorms are reported throughout England and Germany.

— The height of Lake Geneva, Switzerland, above the level of the Atlantic, is 1,218.8 feet.

— Company A of the 7th United States infantry, now stationed in Dakota, has been ordered to Alaska.

— A thousand vessels cross the Atlantic Ocean regularly each month. Some of them cross twice a month.

— The Trinity M. E. church in Chicago was destroyed by fire, February 15, at a loss of more than $100,000.

— A Chinese doctor of Kansas City, Mo., was recently awarded $8,937 against a railroad because a porter refused him passage on a parlor car.

— It is reported that French troops have given a crushing defeat to the Sudanese, whose losses are reported to be between 2,000 and 3,000 men.

— Thousands of fires were kept burning in Florida, during the latter part of February, to save the orange and other fruit trees from injury by frost.

— The Argentine government has received a shipment of 60,000 projectiles for artillery and Maxim guns, with 39,000 Mauser rifles, all valued at $6,000,000.

— The one hundred and sixty-eighth anniversary of the birth of George Washington, Feb. 22, 1900, was celebrated generally throughout the United States.

— Bishop Thoburn is on his way to this country. He comes by way of Hong-Kong and the Philippine Islands, and will arrive at Vancouver early in April.

— Kimberley has been relieved by General French. This makes good the escape of Cecil Rhodes and Dr. Jameson, whom the Boers wish above all men to capture.

— Senator Clark, of Montana, testifying in his own behalf, denied any attempt at bribery on his part, in his election campaign, though the expenses amounted to $115,000.

— When the Ottawa battery of the second contingent of Canadian volunteers left for the African war, Mayor Payment, of that city, presented each soldier with $25 in behalf of the citizens of Ottawa.

— Telephone communication has recently been established between Berlin, Germany, and Copenhagen, Denmark, by a direct line, which is much shorter than the old route by way of Hamburg. The line includes a submarine cable thirty miles long. The cable is made up of four wires, two of which are for the telegraph service, and the other pair for the telephone line.

— Speaking of the proposed purchase of Denmark’s West India Islands, the Chicago Times-Herald, in an editorial, says: “There are abundant reasons why we should refuse to take them as a gift. If the United States has more money than it knows what to do with, let it invest it in the forts at either end of the Nicaragua Canal route. This is something Uncle Sam needs in his Dr. Monroe business.”

— According to the Scientific American, “more than $100,000,000 worth of paper is produced in the United States annually. A third of this is used by the newspapers, and the wrapping paper used amounts to two thirds as much as that consumed by the newspapers. About half as much is used to manufacture books as to print newspapers. Paper boards amount to 300,000 tons a year. Builders use 80,000 tons of paper, and 45,000 tons of wall paper are produced annually.”

— It has been stated by the well-known writer, Dr. Goldwin Smith, in an attack made by him upon “the jingo parties that are making it necessary to increase the navies of the European powers,” that “it will go on till the tension becomes insufferable and something breaks. Then there will be a general war, and Great Britain will know what it is to have the seas swept by hostile cruisers when it has no provision for the people in the islands (England, Ireland, Scotland, and Wales), and is dependent for its industries on imported raw materials, and has a large portion of its wealth invested in foreign securities.”

— At early dawn, February 27, General Piet Cronje surrendered unconditionally to Lord Roberts, at Paardeberg. The number of Boer prisoners approximates 4,000, of which about 1,150 are citizens of the Orange Free State, the remainder being Transvaal citizens. By this stroke the British captured a number of guns. This incident occurred on the anniversary of the British defeat at Majuba Hill, Feb. 27, 1881. The Canadian volunteers led the final and successful attack against Cronje, forcing him to surrender, after his resistance of ten days. The British force outnumbered the captured Boers ten to one, and the latter “were not subjected to any humiliation” by Lord Roberts.

— The siege of Ladysmith was raised March 1, just twenty-four hours after the surrender of General Cronje. Lord Dundonald, with the Natal Carbineers and a composite regiment, entered the town in triumph, as General French had done at Kimberley. The heroic garrison was overjoyed when he appeared with the tidings that six brigades were coming up behind him, and that the country was clear of the Boers. General Buller’s previous victory—his carrying the Boers’ position near Pieters Hill, and the disaster to General Cronje, caused the Boers to abandon the siege of Ladysmith altogether, in hasty retreat. The siege of the garrison began Nov. 2, 1899, and the 9,000 besieged men had suffered more heavily from disease than from shell fire and bullets. Lord Dundonald met with no resistance whatever in entering the town, no Boers being in sight.

— Pirates are causing trouble in Chinese waters.

— Gales are causing severe disasters on the Spanish coast.

— The English House of Commons has agreed to have the British army increased by 120,000 men.

— Paris is also suffering from an epidemic of la grippe, President Loubet and Mme. Bernhardt being among the noted victims.

— Leander J. McCormick, of the famous harvesting machinery firm, and founder of the Leander McCormick observatory of the University of Virginia, died in Chicago, February 21.

— “The most curious street pavement in the world is that which has recently been put down in Lyons, France. It is of glass, the blocks being about eight inches square, each made up of sixteen smaller blocks. The glass blocks are so tightly fitted together that water can not pass between them. As a pavement, glass is said to have a greater resistance than stone. It is a poor conductor of cold, and ice will not form on it.”

— A crusade against swearing has been started in Albany, N. Y. At a large Sunday meeting recently “the members of the various Catholic organizations and the other citizens who were present, pledged themselves to further every effort in the future to stop the use of profanity and indecent language, and to help the city authorities in any and every effort that they might make to prevent cursing and swearing on the streets. The police will be asked to be vigilant and enforce the law prohibiting profanity in public places.” Heart regeneration is the only sure antidote for blasphemy.

— Writing on the reports of a coming conscription in Great Britain, Goldwin Smith, a Canadian writer, says: “If Great Britain means to send out great armies, conscription must come. The country is now so denuded of troops for a distant war with a petty state that, if reliance is to be placed on what military authorities have said, the country is not safe against invasion by an enemy willing to sacrifice its fleet. What havoc the presence of an invader, even for a short time, would make in that swarming hive of industry, may be easily conceived. Yet conscription in the case of Great Britain would be fraught with peculiar evils. The German conscript remains in his own country, and, to some extent, under the guardian influences of his home. So, for the most part, does the French conscript, though it may be his fate to be sent to Algeria, where barrack life, according to all accounts, is physically and morally vile. The British conscript would have to be sent to tropical regions, far from home influences, and exposed not only to a baneful climate, but to the temptations that fill the army hospitals of India with disease.”