News and Miscellany

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park, Washington, D. C. · Aug 22, 1912

News and Miscellany

Notes and clippings from the daily and weekly press

—A Mexican rebel band attacked a train south bound from Mexico City on the morning of August 12. The detailed guard of thirty-six soldiers and more than twenty passengers were slaughtered.

—August 7 the delegates to the first national convention of the new Progressive party acclaimed Col. Theodore Roosevelt, of New York, as their candidate for President, and Gov. Hiram W. Johnson, of California, as their choice for Vice-President.

—Thirty-five persons were injured when Mobile and Ohio train No. 2, from Mobile to St. Louis, was ditched near St. Louis on the evening of August 9. The train was composed of steel cars, which were making their first trip, and trainmen said these coaches prevented loss of life.

—The Panama Canal Bill, as passed by the Senate August 9, grants exemption from tolls to American coastwise vessels and American ships engaged in the foreign trade, and admits to American registry foreign-built ships when owned by Americans and engaged in the foreign trade. It prohibits railroad-owned steamship lines from operating through the canal.

—From Managua, Nicaragua, comes the report that on August 11 the combined rebel forces began a bombardment of the capital city. Three hundred marines have been landed to protect American life and property. The insurrection in Nicaragua was started July 29, by Gen. Luis Mena, then minister of war, who was deposed by President Adolfo Díaz after refusing to resign.

—A bill limiting the appointments of civil service employees to seven years has finally passed both houses of Congress, and only awaits the signature of President Taft before becoming a law. This bill also provides for the abolition of the commerce court. The President has declared his intention to veto the measure. The leaders of Congress declare that if he does this, an effort will be made to pass the bill over his veto.

—On August 8, the national palace at Port au Prince, Haiti, was blown up by a powder explosion and burned to the ground, and the president of the republic of Haiti, Gen. Cincinnatus Leconte, perished. Many palace attendants were killed, and it is estimated that the casualty list will reach four hundred persons, killed or injured. The outbreak of war between Haiti and Santo Domingo is feared as one of the immediate results of this disaster. For some time there have been strained relations between these two countries.

—When President Taft vetoed the wool bill on August 9, he stamped with his disapproval the twenty-fifth legislative measure sent to him from Congress during his administration. Although most of his vetoes have been on comparatively unimportant subjects, during the special session of Congress last summer President Taft began to wield his pen against measures regarded by the legislators with great interest. Four of his vetoes have been of tariff bills. His one other veto of importance last year was directed at the joint resolution admitting Arizona and New Mexico to Statehood.

—Special cable from Constantinople reports one thousand persons dead, and between five thousand and six thousand injured, as the result of a severe earthquake on August 10. The center of the disturbance seems to have been in the region of the Dardanelles. The captain of the American steamer "Virginia" reports that the lighthouse at Ganes Hora, in the Sea of Marmora, has disappeared, and that the villages in the surrounding country are in flames. He was unable to anchor, owing to the violent movement of the sea.

—The details of a massacre of Bulgarians by Mussulmans at Kotschana, European Turkey, on August 2, have just been made public. The butchery lasted three hours, and 140 were killed.

—An explosion of black damp and coal dust on the morning of August 8, in the Lorraine shaft of the coal-field in the village of Gerthe, four miles from Bochum, Germany, cost the lives of 103 miners, according to the official report. Two others were severely injured, and 23 slightly injured.

—That the United States has not abandoned, nor changed in any way, its attitude concerning the Monroe doctrine, was made very plain when the resolution was offered in the United States Senate by Senator Lodge relative to the acquisition of property in this hemisphere for military or naval bases by any foreign power. The resolution, which was adopted by a vote of 51 to 4, asserts that the United States can not see, "without grave concern," any harbor or advantageous spot in the western hemisphere taken over by a foreign government, or by a foreign corporation bearing close relation to the government, if such occupancy would threaten the commerce or the safety of the United States.

—Near Eastern affairs are reaching a grave crisis, according to reports from Constantinople, which say that the committee of union and progress has resolved to summon the dissolved chamber of deputies to reassemble at Adrianople, to which city the leaders have already gone. The government has proclaimed martial law at Saloniki, Adrianople, and Smyrna. Fighting continues without cessation along the Montenegrin frontier, where a number of guerrilla bands have been in conflict with the Turkish troops. The Montenegrin troops, which came in contact with the Turks recently when they crossed the frontier, have destroyed eleven Turkish blockhouses. That international complications involving the balance of power in Europe might easily result from a declaration of war between Turkey and Montenegro, is feared.