News and Miscellany

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Jan 15, 1914

News and Miscellany

Notes and clippings from the daily and weekly press

— Russia will soon have a fleet of forty Curtiss flying boats to augment the efforts of her regular army toward territorial expansion.

— Cardinal Rampolla, formerly papal secretary of state, died in Rome late in December. Rampolla's full title was Cardinal Mariano Rampolla, Marquis del Tindaro, Palatini Cardinal and Archpriest of St. Peter's. He was a Sicilian. He was born at Pollizzi, in 1843, and was educated in Rome, at the Collegio Capranica, the Roman Jesuit college, and at the Academy of Noble Ecclesiastics.

— Formal notification has been sent by Third Assistant Postmaster-General Dockery to each of the 58,400 postmasters

throughout the country concerning the new rates of postage and other parcel post changes, effective January 1 and March 16, 1914, as provided in the recent order of the Postmaster-General. The order reduces the rates, applicable on and after Jan. 1, 1914, to parcel post mail for the third, fourth, fifth, and sixth zones, and increases the limit of weight to fifty pounds for parcels mailed for delivery within the first and second zones, and to twenty pounds within all other zones. It also provides that on and after March 16, 1914, books shall be embraced in the fourth class of mail, the rate of postage for parcels of books weighing eight ounces or less being fixed at 1 cent for each two ounces or fraction thereof, and extending the regular zone rates to parcels of books weighing more than eight ounces.

— Determined to maintain naval supremacy in the waters bordering southeastern Europe, the Greek government has planned a strong program of expansion for the next five years. The government will let contracts for the construction of two dreadnaughts, two cruisers of 10,000 tons each, forty-three minor vessels, and twenty hydroaeroplanes.

— Europe experienced the bitterest year-end in a decade. Blizzards and floods did great damage inland, and gales of exceptional violence ravaged the coasts. In Spain and Portugal the intense cold caused numerous deaths, and Mt. Vesuvius, in Italy, was covered with snow. In Germany, France, and southwestern Europe there were also heavy snowfalls.

— From January 1 to 5 a severe storm swept the United States from the Pacific to the Atlantic. San Francisco was practically cut off by rail from the outside world for a time, her beautiful beach was wrecked, and the great transpacific cable exposed to danger. Floods in the Napa Valley and along the Sacramento River did great damage to property. On the Atlantic coast five lives were lost, and the property damage will probably exceed $1,000,000. The coast from Portland, Maine, to Norfolk, Va., experienced a severe gale for more than twenty-four hours.

— On January 2, the scout cruiser "Chester" brought John Lind, special United States envoy to Mexico, for a conference with President Wilson, who is spending his vacation at Pass Christian, Miss. The President joined Mr. Lind on the cruiser for this conference, and absolute secrecy has been maintained regarding the matters discussed. However, the following warning issued by the State Department to all American citizens the next day is significant: "The information in the possession of the department indicates that economic and political conditions have not changed in such a way as to justify an attempt to return to Mexico and resume industrial operations there, and that any purpose to take such a step is due to misunderstanding or to misrepresentations as to actual conditions and prospects at the present moment."

— Queen Eleonora of Bulgaria has appealed to the American Red Cross Association, asking relief for thousands of refugees left destitute by the Balkan war. The queen's request is seconded by many Americans. Miss Edith M. Durham, a well-known war correspondent, says: "The survivors were left destitute to face a winter, possessing only the rags they wore. Heaps of blackened ruins are all that remain of prosperous villages; fruit and timber trees, and, worst of all, the great olive gardens have been destroyed. To provide food for the invading armies, every beast was driven off, and every possession looted. When it was safe to do so, the owners returned to their devastated homesteads. The women crouch in a corner of the roofless walls, and boil chopped grass and dandelion leaves to feed their starving children. At night they crawl into miserable little kennels made of bent twigs and brushwood, which do not keep out the chilling rains. Among many such scenes, I remember seeing a woman and two children huddled under an umbrella in the lee of a wall. It was snowing, but the umbrella was the only shelter they possessed. There were others who had flour, but found it useless, because they lacked a pot in which to cook it, much less the means of making bread. There are hundreds of such who will die this winter, slowly and miserably, if help is not given them."

— War Department officials are agreed that the training of the youth of the country is a fundamental principle of national defense. With the reassembling of Congress a concerted effort will be made to secure the enactment of a law to permit the Secretary of War to issue old "Krag" rifles, with ammunition, for use by rifle clubs organized throughout the country under the rules of the national board for the promotion of rifle practice. The proposed law also will be designed to permit the issuance of similar ordnance supplies to schools having a uniformed corps of cadets and carrying on military training.

— An indication that Russia is not satisfied that all complications raised by the recent Balkan wars have yet been disposed of was given New Year's Day by issue of a long official list of topics which Russian newspapers are prohibited from mentioning during 1914. Among forbidden news items are those referring to changes in equipment and effective strength of the army and navy, the building, repairing, and arming of Russian warships, information concerning fortresses and naval ports, the maneuvers of troops or fleets, test mobilizations, and chartering of merchant vessels for transports.

— What probably will prove to be the largest and most important ruin discovered in South America since the days of the Spanish conquest — the discovery of the ruins of the city of Machu Picchu, the cradle of the Inca Empire, on the top of the Peruvian Andes — was brought about by the chance meeting of an expedition under the auspices of the National Geographic Society and Yale University, with a Peruvian Indian. Details of the discovery became known only recently. The expedition came across the Indian, who was selling food and pasturage for horses to travelers, on the mountain trail, six days out from Cuzco. Professor Bingham, director of the expedition, says that the Indian, when questioned, said he believed there were signs of ruins on the top of the high and almost inaccessible precipices near by, and offered to act as guide. The professor became interested, and a few hours' later the ruins were discovered. "Machu Picchu," says Professor Bingham, "is essentially a city of refuge. It is perched on a mountain top, in the most inaccessible corner of the most inaccessible section of the Urubamba River. So far as I know, there is no part of the Andes that has been better defended by nature. Here on a narrow ridge, flanked on all sides by precipitous slopes, a highly civilized people — artistic, inventive, and capable of sustained endeavor — at some time in the remote past built themselves a city of refuge. Since they had no iron nor steel tools, — only stone hammers, — its construction must have cost many generations if not centuries of effort."