Jasper County Democrat, Volume 21, Number 76, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 21 December 1918 — Happenings of the World Tersely Told [ARTICLE]

Happenings of the World Tersely Told

<7.5. — Teutonic War News A Paris dispatch says the American delegates to the peace congress have resolved to advocate the sinking of the surrendered enemy warships and resist any proposition to distribute them on the basis of naval losses. • • * A correspondent with the Americans •cross the Rhine says the Third army now occupies a strip of Germany containing more than 4,500 square miles. It Is supervising the administration of «everal hundred villages and operating hundreds of miles of railroads and street car lines. • ♦ • A dispatch from American army headquarters says men in German military uniforms are not to be allowed within the American area of occupation after December 15, unless they are on duty and are provided with written permission of the American military authorities, according-4o a proclamation issued by Col. J. C. Rhea, chairman of the American bridgehead commission.

♦ ♦ ♦ European War News A Paris dispatch says the Journal de Geneve asserts it has learned from a good source that some of the principal German manufacturers, financiers and pan-German leaders fear a German revolution to such an extent that they ■are secretly negotiating to persuade the allies to occupy the whole of Germany. ■* * * A Paris dispatch says the Berlin central government is powerless to preserve order and deserters from the army terrorize the inhabitants. Robberies and attacks follow one another rapidly and apartments and shops are robbed in midday. Committees of all kinds, It continues, puldish contradictory orders and practice blackmail. ♦ * * Foreign A Stockholm dispatch says Prof. Herjoe Hirn and Dr. Adolph Toerjjgren, selected as Finnish peace delegates, will leave soon for I’aris. * ♦ * A Hamburg dispatch says fifteen interned British merchant ships have been released and sent to England. • * * A London dispatch says the entire Portuguese cabinet has resigned. • * * Unrest in Spain growing out of the separatist tendencies of an element In Catalonia is credited to bolshevik activities fostered by German organizations and funds, according to private •dispatches received at Washington. * * * All Paris is talking of the'call paid President Wilson by Marshal Foch. The great strategist appeared in a much-worn blue uniform, adorned by none of his decorations, and wearing an old forage cap. * * » Field Marshal Sir Douglas Haig will become a duke if plans materialize in London. It is apparently an open secret in court circles that a dukedom ■will be conferred upon the Britijdi comraalder in chief at Buckingham Palace. « * * Admiral Canto Y. Castro has been ■elected president of Portugal, In succession to Dr. Sidonio Paes, who was assassinated at Lisbon. * * * An Amsterdam dispatch says a general strike was called in Berlin. Ad■vices from the frontier early in the day said that 350,000 workers had gone out and that only two newspapers were published. • ♦ • The situation in Smyrna is extremely critical, according to newspaper dispatches from Mitylene. Young Turk officials have posted armed bands at various places about the town and these have been bombarded by the allies' fleets. • • • Count Johann Heinrich von Bernstorff, former German ambassador to the United States, is to be appointed foreign minister in the Ebert government, according to a Berlin message. » • • Several hundred boys and girls paraded through the streets of Berlin on their way to the relchstag building, where the soldiers and workingmen’s congress is being held. They demand■ed, among other things, votes for persons eighteen years of age, the abolition of corporal punishment in schools and the participation by children In the administration of the government •nd schools. • • i» A revolution has broken out in Bulgaria, according to Information received by the Berlin Lokal' Anzeiger 2trom Bulgaria, by way of Hungary. The German moderates have scored overwhelming victories in the elections, according to an Amsterdam dispatch. A Stockholm dispatch ■ says the bolshevik government is evacuating Petrograd. It plans to take refuge in Nljni-Novgorod, 600 miles southeast of Petrograd. _ _ _

President Wilson will spend the Christmas holidays at General Pershing’s headquarters. Official announcement to this effect was made at Paris. • • • Washington By unanimous vote the house ways and means committee at Washington postponed Indefinitely action on the request of former Secretary McAdoo for authority to make peace-time loans of $1,500,000,000 to foreign countries. • • • Legislation authorizing increase of the permanent enlisted Strength of the navy from 131,000 men to 217,000 was recommended to the house naval • affairs committee at Washington by Capt. H. Laning, acting chief of the bureau of navigation. * ♦ » A resolution putting congress on record as favoring trial and punishment of the former kaiser was introduced in the house at Washington by Representatove Darrow of Pennsydvania. • * • A Washington dispatch says the American legation at Bucharest was found to have been entered and robbed when American minister Vopicka returned there from Jassy. Goods valued'at more than SIOO,OOO were stolen. •” ♦ ; • A papal letter was presented to President Wilson at I’aris by Mgr. Cerrettf, the undersecretary of state. It pleaded for assistance on behalf of small oppressed nationalities, especially Armenia and Poland. The pope’s letter also expressed the hope of a just and durable peace being reached through enlightened action. • * • General Pershing notified the war department at Washington that he had designated for early convoy home a number of additional units, including the Twenty-seventh engineers and the Three Hundred and Forty-sixth field artillery; in all about 4,500 officers and men. ♦ ♦ *

A Paris dispatch says President Wilson conferred with Edward N. Hurley, the shipping director, on the problem of obtaining ships for the homeward movement of the troops. ♦ * * Germany should be compelled to pay, so far as possible, the cost of the war to the United States, Senator Simmons of North Carolina, chairman of the finance committee, declared on the floor of the senate at Washington. ♦ » * Responding to a senate resolution, General Manager Piez of the Emergency Fleet corporation advised the senate at Washington that from August, 1917, to November 23, 1918, 280 ships were constructed by that organization, aggregating J,216,367 gross tons. ♦ * ♦ It cost the government twenty-nine and three-quarters millions of dollars to raise seventeen and three-quarters billions of dollars through the four Liberty loans and War Savings stamps. These figures were made public at Washington when the house committee on expenditures in the treasury department gave out the report of Secretary McAdoo. * * * An increase of 6,726,000 acres of winter wheat, or nearly 16 per cent over that sown in the fall of 1917, Is shown in the report of the federal department of agriculture * » * Postmaster General Burleson at Washington announced a reduction in night long-distance telephone rates, and a charge for all long-distance calls ,whether the individual called is reached or not, The new rates are effective January 21. Between 8:30 and 12 p. m. the rate is to be one-half of the day rate, and between 12 p. m. and 4:30 a. m. one-fourth the day rate. Appropriation of $600,000,000 for road construction is proposed in a bill introduced at Washington by Representative Browne of Wisconsin, Republican. Fifty million dollars would be made available for Immediate use and the entire total in six years. «• • • Domestic Alberto J. Pani, minister of industry and labor in tl»e Carranza cabinet left Laredo, Tex., for Washington. It was reported there that Pani is to become Mexican ambasador to France. • • • Villa bands raided the ranch of an American, John B. Hibler, at Galena, in northern Mexico, December 9, according to a report to the state department at Washington. No one was killed. The raiders took most of the corn at the ranch, the entire store of feed end 26 burros, 16 oxen, 4 300 goats and all the cattle, mules. Four more American members of the crew of the United States armored cruiser Brooklyn have died at Yokohama as a result of injuries sustained in the explosion, supposedly of coal dust. • • • An aviator, said to be Carl Smith«of Brockton, Mass., was killed instantly when his machine fell 500 feet at the Standard Aircraft corporation’s field at Elizabeth, N. J. * * * Four men were killed in an airplane collision near West Point, Miss. They are Lieuts. Alvin W. Splane of Oil City, Pa., and Fred Synnestvedt of Pittsburgh, Pa., flying instructors of fayne field, and Private Fred P. James of Litchfield, Hl., and Guy C. Wells of Reynoldsville, HL, of Bowen field. .