News and Miscellany

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Jul 11, 1871

News and Miscellany.

“Can ye not discern the signs of the times?”

NOVA SCOTIA.—The statement is officially confirmed from London that Halifax will (now that the Treaty of Washington has been ratified) soon cease to be the rendezvous for the British North American fleet, and that the fleet in Canadian waters will be reduced to the Commodore’s ship.

A LARGE party of Japanese visited the Howard University on Thursday, and spent the day in examining everything of interest in connection with that institution. Gen. Howard found them the most inquisitive visitors he has ever met.

A NOTABLE feature of College Commencements this year is the frequency with which Japanese faces appear. The Government of Japan has sent several hundred young men to this country to be educated. In a few years they will carry back with them all that our colleges can give in the way of scholastic culture, as well as such germs of Christian civilization as may effect more for the ultimate advancement of Japan than a century of ordinary missionary work. According to universal testimony, these young men are apt, thoughtful, attentive, well-behaved, and eager to learn. Year by year the number of those coming hither appears likely to increase, and the result may be that in 1900 Japan herself will have become the Athens of the East.

The Japanese Empire is reaching out in many directions in search of instructors in the arts of peace and war. The various native agents in this country have collected a vast amount of information designed to be of use in the future development of the industrial resources of that country; and to-day we have information that the Commissioner of Agriculture at Washington has accepted a position at the head of an expedition to examine into the best means for developing the agricultural resources of Japan. Other scientific gentlemen from this country have taken commissions in the same expedition. One or two skilled military men have been invited over to Japan by the Embassy, and will be set to work as instructors in artillery and cavalry practice.

A DIFFERENCE has arisen between the Egyptian Government and the French Consul at Cairo, in consequence of the alleged illegal arrest of a French citizen there by the police. Satisfaction has been demanded by France, and negotiations are pending for the settlement of the dispute.

ROME is once more the capital of united Italy. The kingdom within whose boundary lines so much of the romance and poetry of history, since the wandering Æneas landed upon its shores, have found a birthplace and a home, extends again from the Tuscan to the Sicilian seas, from the Alps to the Adriatic, from the German forests to the waves of the Mediterranean.

The king of Italy took formal possession of Rome on Sunday. The embassies of all the principal countries of Europe, as well as that of the United States, have removed thither, while little Belgium alone, its government saturated with Catholicism, recognizes still a divided Italy, and sends ambassadors both to the Pope and to Emanuel.

The Pope as the spiritual sovereign of the Catholic church, residing in Rome, is to be treated with all reverence and consideration. No respect will be paid to him, however, as a temporal ruler. There is no probability that any foreign power will interfere with what was inevitable when the “man of Sedan” lost his throne, nor is the pope likely to abandon Rome as his residence, even though he has threatened to leave for Malta or Corsica. Whatever of spiritual power and vicegerency divine he has possessed he will still retain, and if he sways the hearts of six hundred million Catholics, his rights to a territory about the size of our own District of Columbia are of small importance. To attribute so much of his dignity and power to a few acres of ground, is like supposing that the greatness and might of the United States Government proceed, for the most part, from its ownership of the District just referred to.—Detroit Post.