Health and Missions by Editor

Pacific Press Publishing Association · Mountain View, California · Apr 21, 1914

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 41, No. 15.

Health and Missions

By Editor

STERILIZING milk by electricity is an experiment that is being made in Liverpool. An electric current of high voltage is passed through the milk while it is flowing. The advantage claimed over sterilization by steam is that the milk tastes the same as when it leaves the cow. Strict tests appear to show that any tubercular or other contamination is removed. Leading bacteriologists are studying the process very closely.

THE decrease in domestic animals used for food since 1910 amounts to 18,000,000 head. Some people are becoming uneasy because of this fact, thinking that our food supply is in danger; but there is no occasion for uneasiness. There are thousands of people who never taste a mouthful of meat from one year's end to the other, and who enjoy better health and are better nourished than their meat-eating friends. The use of flesh as an article of diet savors rather of barbarism and degeneracy than of enlightenment and progress.

WE have been delayed in noticing a copy of the Missionary Calendar for 1914, which came to our desk some time ago. This is a calendar devoted exclusively to the interests of missions. An item of vital interest on missions is given for each day of the year. For instance, the item for January 24 is the following: "Our responsibility never can cease so long as we have a life to live for Christ and a whole world still waiting for the gospel." January 27 has the following: "Less than 10,000,000 of Russia's 163,000,000 population have ever heard a so-called gospel sermon." The cover has two photographs,—one of a group of thirty-three Chinese Christian men, and the happy expression on their faces is in striking contrast to the hopeless and purposeless countenance of the heathen, and is cogent proof that it pays to bring the glad tidings to this hitherto superstitious and devil-worshiping race; the other, a group of African Christian girls, standing as the fruit of the labor of love and sacrifice of the Christian missionary. Those desiring copies of this calendar can correspond with the publisher, A. W. Roffe, 274 Bathurst Street, Toronto, Ontario, Canada.

UPON the recommendation of Surgeon-General Braisted, of the United States navy, Secretary of the Navy Daniels has issued the order that "the use or introduction for drinking purposes of alcoholic liquors on board any naval vessel or within any navy-yard or station is prohibited, and commanding officers will be held directly responsible for the enforcement of this order." Secretary Daniels, in speaking of the order that he had issued, mentioned cases of young men who owe their first drink and their start on the downward road to their connection with the navy. He said, "Experience has shown the wisdom of having no intoxicants on our ships for the young men who enlist."

ONE of the recent news despatches from Florence is to the effect that Signor Ulivi, with an ultraviolet-ray apparatus, exploded two torpedoes charged with black gunpowder, and two others charged with smokeless powder, in the River Arno, about two miles distant from his apparatus. Commenting on this despatch, Harper's Weekly very pertinently asks, "What, then, of the $10,000,000 Dreadnoughts, whose magazines can be exploded by a ray machine a hundred or a thousand miles distant — or of the soldier who carries in his cartridge belt his own annihilation?"

ON April 7 representatives of the United States and Colombia signed a treaty the terms of which give Colombia $25,000,000 in a lump sum as full payment for the loss suffered by that state when Panama seceded and transferred the Canal Zone to the United States. This settlement gives the United States exclusive rights for the construction of the interoceanic canal through Colombian territory, and also allows this country coaling privileges on the Colombian coast.

THE recent elections in Illinois have added sixteen counties to the thirty that already bar the saloons from their borders. It is estimated that this last success of prohibition in that state puts more than one thousand additional saloons out of existence. One of the best things about it is that some of the larger cities of the state, where the saloons are always the most strongly entrenched, are among those which are placed in the dry territory.

DEAN DAVENPORT, of the college of agriculture of the University of Illinois, says that "grotesque fashions are responsible in large part for the increased cost of living." And the dean might also have said truthfully that these same grotesque fashions are responsible for a great deal of the increasing immorality of the times.

UPON taking office recently as surgeon-general of the army, Brigadier-General William C. Gorgas stated that he is in sympathy with the order prohibiting liquor in the navy, and he believes that such an order would do much good in the army.