Note and Comment by L. A. S.

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Washington, D.C. · Mar 9, 1905

Note and Comment

By L. A. S.

THE question whether the sun may not be losing its heat is receiving some attention just now in scientific circles. An instrument for measuring heat, devised by Professor Langley and alleged to be capable of detecting the smallest changes in temperature, shows, says a writer in The Academy and Literature (London), that the sun's heat has recently fallen off in a marked degree. This writer says:—

He [Langley] believes that at the end of March, 1903, contemporaneously with a marked increase in sun-spots, something happened in the sun that caused a rapid fall in the solar radiation, which subsequently has continued to be about ten per cent less than before! What the cause of this fall may have been we can not conjecture; but it is interesting to inquire what consequences it had for the earth. According to Professor Langley such a change in the sun would reduce the temperature of the earth's surface by something less than 13.5 degrees Fahrenheit. Now when attention is directed to the exact observations made at eighty-nine stations in the north temperate zone, and when these are compared with the results of many previous years, it is found that a definite fall of more than two degrees did actually occur; nor is it possible to conceive “what influence, not solar, could have produced this rapid and simultaneous reduction of temperatures over the whole north temperate zone, and continued operative for so long a period.” While we remain ignorant of the cause of this solar change, we can not make any predictions as to its persistence or possible accentuation. All we can conclude is that our tenure of this “lukewarm bullet” is perhaps not so certain as some of us have thought.

A MOVEMENT for closer relations between church organizations and labor unions has been started in Omaha, Neb. The following facts relative to the situation are stated in the Omaha Bee of February 21:—

For the first time members of the Central Labor Union sat as fraternal delegates in the weekly meeting of the ministers' association yesterday. They were President Louis V. Guye, Edward M. Birch, and C. L. Burkett. In return the preachers elected their president, J. E. Hummon, Rev. E. Combie Smith, and B. F. Fellman as delegates to the labor council. This condition was brought about by Rev. Charles Stelzle, workingman's secretary of the Presbyterian Board of Missions, who is concerned in bringing the churches and the unionist closer together. . . . Rev. Stelzle congratulated the ministers on deciding to send delegates to the Central Labor Union. “The possibilities in the exchange of relations and sympathetic co-operation between the men in labor unions and the churches are big with hope,” said he. “They are tremendous. Scarcely any great, broad movement along social lines in the cities can not be accomplished by such a force.”

The great world-wide movements with which human history is to be brought to a close are to have a distinctly religious character, which will necessarily involve federation between religious and secular organizations.

THE agitation which centers around the subject of the alleged discrimination in railway rates and the use of the vast wealth and power of corporations to foster monopoly, against the interests of the people, is driving the country toward governmental control of corporate affairs. In a recent speech in Philadelphia, President Roosevelt said on this point:—

Neither this people nor any other free people will permanently tolerate the use of the vast power conferred by vast wealth, and especially by wealth in its corporate form, without lodging somewhere in the government the still higher power of seeing that this power, in addition to being used in the interest of the individual or individuals possessing it, is also used for, and not against, the interests of the people as a whole.

The people, if they seek this remedy against the misuse of corporate power, will centralize power in the federal government. The movement toward centralization of power in the government is already marked, and is exciting apprehension in many quarters; yet it seems necessary, as a remedy for monopolistic tyranny, to come still nearer to a paternal form of government. Individual freedom, which was secured under this government, has been abused, and the remedy sought will necessarily restrict that freedom. Whether or not a strong central government would prove to be in the interests of the people, whether it would deliver them from the clutches of selfishness and greed, or whether the latter would find means of working through the government as formerly through the trust, is a question to be carefully considered in the light of reason and experience. But it remains a fact to be noted, as a sign of the times, that the nation is rapidly moving along the pathway of centralization of power, and toward a paternal, if not a monarchical, form of government.

THE papal “apostolic” delegate to this country, Mgr. Falconio, recently issued a financial appeal to the hierarchy in the United States in behalf of the pope, in which he said:—

I regret to state that, notwithstanding the generous response of the American people, the financial condition of the holy see is far from being prosperous or satisfactory. The present sad state of some of the most prosperous nations of Europe and the increased demands on the funds of the church are the principal causes of the actual financial situation of the holy see, a situation upon which our holy father looks with alarm, because, unless his children come forward more liberally to his assistance, notwithstanding the utmost economy practised in every direction, he can hardly meet the exigencies of the vast administration of the church, which extends throughout the whole world. Consequently, his eminence, the cardinal secretary of state, requests me to make known to all the ordinaries of the United States the said financial difficulties, in the hope that by their zeal those sources of revenue which have heretofore been forthcoming from France and Italy, and of which at present in a very large measure the holy see is deprived, may be adequately compensated. . . . Hence, besides the general yearly collection, which is to remain as heretofore and to be more earnestly encouraged, other means are suggested which may prove here in America as productive as they have been in some countries of Europe.

The cause of this “sad state of some of the most prosperous nations of Europe,” on which, because of their devotion to Rome, the Vatican has depended in the past, is their union of church and state. Rome has made them what they are, and now is obliged to turn for help to a non-Catholic country, which, if Rome were allowed her way here, would ere long be brought into the same sad state at which all the devoted Catholic nations of the past in due time arrived. Even Catholics ought to see the point in this situation. L. A. S.