Jasper County Democrat, Volume 17, Number 51, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 3 October 1914 — DIGEST OF WORLD’S IMPORTANT NEWS [ARTICLE]

DIGEST OF WORLD’S IMPORTANT NEWS

EPITOME OF THE BIG HAPPENINGS OF THE WEEK. TO BE READ AT A GLANCE Items, Both Foreign and Domestic, That Have Interest for Busy Readers, Arranged and Classified for Their Convenience. European War News

The Germans are desperately attacking Fort Vaelhem, the key to Flanders, and the magazine of the fort has blown up. Fort Vaelhem is one of the strongest forts of the outer chain surrounding Antwerp. • • • Preparations for the retreat of the ■German right have already begun, according, to dispatches to London, which report that German troops are moving from the north of France toward Tournai and Mons. » * » A dispatch receive in Rome says that the kaiser is very 111 at Suvalkl. • • • Germans are receding before a forcible and sustained pressure from the allied armies, especially on their western and eastern wings, while the center, where the Germans are more strongly Intrenched than at any other point with heavy artillery, remains almost stationary. ♦ • ♦ Work on the fortifications around Vienna, is being hastened. Asiatic cholera has broken out. Germans retiring through Augustowo forests west of Grodno after failing to force passage of Niemen river. Russians seek to cut their communications. Russians capture German position near Koptzyewo. 1 * • • According to the Lokal Anzeiger in Berlin, Prince Franz, son of the king of Bavaria, who has the rank of major general and is in command of the Second Bavarian regiment, has been slightly wounded in the thigh. He is now on his way ,to Munich. ' * * * Among the trophies that have just reached Smolensk are the blooded cattle and horses of Emperor William’s country estate at Rominten. They were seized by Russian troops in East Prussia. Announcement in London of the loss of another British steamer was made by the government press bureau in the following statement: The owners of the trawler St. Cuthbert of Grimsby have been informed that the ship was sunk in the North sea on August 27 by a German torpedo boat."

The foreign office at Bordeaux informed the French embassy at Washington that business conditions are improving in France and under the new decree of moratorium two-thirds of any account held by a merchant dr manufacturer in a bank may'be withdrawn. » * • A demand to know if Great Britain Is interfering with shipments of copper from the United States to Rotterdam, in neutral bottoms, was made on the secretary of stale by unanimous vote of the senate at Washington in a resolution introduced by Senator Smoot of Utah. * • * The German cruiser Emden lias sunk four British steamships and a collier. By order of the Belgian military authorities Alost, a town of 34,000 inhabitants, has -been evacuated by its entire civilian i population. This is the answer to the wrecking of Termonde, seven miles to the north, which was wiped out with a completeness never known to history. • * * Col. Frederick Gordon of the Gor- ( d°n Highlanders, who was reported to have been killed in action on the continent. is a prisoner in Germany. Janies W. Gerard, the American ambassador in Berlin, sent word to the Gordon family that Colonel Gordon is alive, but is a prisoner in the German hands. ,♦ ♦ ♦ The operators of a German dirigible dropped a bomb into a schoolhouse at Bielostok, Russia, killing 11 children, according to a dispatch from Petrograd to the London Morning Post. • « • The Italian government instructed its ambassador at Vienna, Grand Duke D’Avorna, to protest against sowing the Dalmatian coast with mines and to ask the Austrian government to take steps to prevent disasters from the mines already there. •♦ ♦ ♦ The German siege guns have resumed their destructive bombardment of Belgian cities, and Malines, Aloat and some of the outlying forts at Antwerp have been shelled since Sunday morning. Mons is reported to be in flames. All German troops that have been in Schleswig, Prussia, have been sent hurriedly to France and Belgium or to protect Sylt, one of the North Frisian Islands off the west coast of Schleswig.

Capt R. Goetsche, In command of the Danish steamer United States, tn New York from Christiansand, said he bad picked up a wireless in the North sea saying 30 British warships were on their way through the Cattegat to help the Russian fleet in the Baltic sea. • • • After a sanguinary combat the Servian troops have retaken Semlin, In Slavonia. This assures them the advantage of being able to take the offensive. • • • The German attack on the outer lines of Antwerp’s defenses has begun In earnest. Heavy firing was continued on the forts at Waelhem and St Catherine, siege artillery being used. At Duffel many refugees, men, women and children, were killed by shells while waiting for a train in the station. * • • The Dardanelles have been closed to navigation. The duration of the closure is not stated. Russia is said to be ready to declare war on Turkey. ♦ . ♦ • For 48 hours the armies of the Germans and the allies have hammered away at each other at close quarters, as the climax of the battle of the four rivers, which has been in progress for over a fortnight. Thus far the struggle has not brought decisive desuits to either side. Both, however, claim encouraging if slight gains. ♦ » » The right wing of the Austrians has been driven back beyond the Carpathians into Hungary, where they are being pursued by the Russians. The Austrian debacle is complete and they have lost all their artillery. The left wing has retreated to Cracow. The Russians have captured 300,000 Austrians since the war began. ♦. • *: * An official diepatch from Berlin says that the response which the German nation has made to the government’s war subscription of $1,250,000,000 has removed all anxiety over the financial condition of the empire. According to German military authorities the war is costing Germany $5,000,000 a day.

• • • For three long days without cessation the Germans have hurled their masses against the French and English along the entire front in northern France. The French official view is that these operations, the fiercest that have yet taken place, are by high command, meaning possibly direct instructions from the emperor himself. Their purpose has been to break through the allied lines, but both French aiftT British official reports say thev have' failed. Washington Vice-President Marshall laid before the senate at \\ ashington a telegram from 5.000 members of the Women’s 1 hristian Temperance union in Wisconsin protesting against the raising Of any revenue from the further taxation of liquor. as, proposed in the war lux bill. ** * i A joint resolution to express the appreciation of congress and to confer gold medals upon the. A. B. C. mediators. Ambassadors DaGama, Naon and Suarez, for their services in the Mexican mediation, was introduced by (.hairman !• lood ot the house foreign affairs committee at Washington. Domestic Martin H. Glynn. Democrat; Charles : S. Whitman. Republican, and Frederick N Davenport, Progressive, were nominated at the primary in New York. The senatorial race was settled in an equally decisive manner by the nomination on the Democratic ticket of Ambassador lames W. Gerard, who was opposed by Franklip L). Roosevelt and James S. McDonogh, and by the Republican choice of William M. Calder. » » • Four men and a girl died in an inferno of gas-flame and exploding powder when the concrete and steel building that housed the Pain Fireworks company at Chicago was blown up. They are,. Harry Bishop Thearle, president of Pain’s Fireworks company; Miss Florence Hill. Edward M. Connors. R. M. Wolff and Joseph Johnson. •• ' * A mother lost her life in a fruitless effort to save the lives of her four children when their house caught Are as they slept. The dead; Mrs. Joseph Stone, thirty yedrs old; Wilbur, four years old; Marcell, three years old; Bernice, two years old. * 1 * * Mexican War In his reply to the petition of Villa’s ■ generals asking him to resign in favor lof Fernando Iglesias Calderon and i thus avoid civil war, General Carranza j says: “I will gladly take such action j if it is ratified by the general conference; If not I will fight.” Carranza ( demands that Villa resign as head of the army. Fernando Calderon declined i Villa’s offer of the presidency.

Fivd more troops of American cavalry took up positions along the Mexican border to prevent any violation of United States territory in' the battle now imminent between Carranzistas and Villaists at Neco, Sonora. • • • Immediate resignation of Gen. Venustiano Carranza as first chief of the'constitutlonallsts is the only basis on which Gen. Francisco Villa will agree to settlement of differences between himself and Carranza. Far. nando Calderon Is Villa’s choice.