p. 13 | FOREIGN | AdventAI

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Dec 24, 1896

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 22, No. 51.

FOREIGN.

—The Radical party in Switzerland has been successful in the recent general election. M. de Uscher was elected president, and M. Ruffy vice president.

—An explosion in a match factory at Aschaffenburg, Bavaria, on the 15th inst., resulted in the destruction of the building, the death of fifteen women and girls, and the serious injury of seven others.

—A despatch from Constantinople, dated the 17th inst., says that ninety arrests have been effected there of Turkish notables, including government officials and forty-five Circassian women of the sultan's harem.

—The strike of dock laborers at Hamburg has lingered now for several weeks, and the police have prohibited the strikers from patrolling the port. Those who are now offering to return to work are rejected, the employers having decided not to take any of them back till the strike is ended.

—A London despatch of the 17th inst. says: "An earthquake, the most violent ever experienced in this country, has shaken every shore from Durham to Surrey, and from London to the Welch coast. The quaking was accompanied by loud rushing sounds. Buildings trembled, furniture shifted, doors were thrown open, and people fled from their houses."

—Advices from Rome claim good authority for the statement that the pope will renew negotiations with the United States for the creation of an American Legation to the Vatican. The manner in which this government caters to Roman dignitaries, sending out vessels to greet incoming representatives, etc., is certainly encouragement to the pope to continue his solicitations.

—A decree has been issued by the Venezuelan executive, ordering private citizens owning arms and ammunition to deposit them with the government. It is inferred that there is at least a suspicion of some kind of a popular uprising. It is known that there is objection to the submission of the Guiana boundary question to the United States and Great Britain without Venezuela's having a representative in the arbitration commission.

—United States Consul Bergholt, at Erzeroum, reports that the number of children under twelve years of age made orphans by the Turkish massacres of 1895 is 50,000. The question of what shall be done with these orphans is receiving the attention of the Christian world. The American Board of Commissioners has the question of creating orphanages, clothing factories, and industrial institutions under consideration. German charitable and religious societies are preparing to establish orphan asylums, and the British ambassador at Constantinople has initiated a movement leading toward settling a number of widows and their children from the province of Erzeroum on the island of Cyprus. In Erzeroum there are 180 widows, with 700 children, without means; in Erzingham, 100 widows, with 450 children; and at Beyrout, 1,119 widows, with 500 children.

—Representatives of the Cuban insurgents still claim that the rumored death of General Maceo lacks confirmation. A Havana correspondent says that he offered $250 for a photograph of the body which the Spaniards claimed to be that of the dead general, if it proved to be indeed as claimed, or $100 if it were some one else, but his offers were refused. Up to the 16th inst., the friends of the insurgent cause in Havana had no confirmation of Maceo's death from insurgent sources; and they refuse to accept the general's long silence as positive evidence of his death.

—A New York World correspondent says it is morally certain that 1,200 innocent Cubans were killed by Spanish troops in the province of Pinar del Rio in five months before General Weyler took the field. The previous war in Cuba lasted ten years, and atrocities increased from year to year. This war may last as long. Start with 1,200 murders in a single province in five months, and in ten years the total would be enormous. In a single day one of Weyler's columns set the torch to over five hundred buildings in a forced march through outlying settlements. The day previous, General Melquizo's command destroyed 300 houses, besides raiding an insurgent hospital, putting the feeble inmates to death. The campaign was one of desolation, for the purpose of producing starvation.