THE GREAT ROUND WORLD AND WHAT IS GOING ON IN IT Vol. XVI. December 27, 1900. Copyright, 1900, by THE GREAT ROUND WORLD Co. Whole No. 216 As we furnish with this issue an accurate and comprehensive index for the past three months, we take what is generally our contents page to call special attention to another combination offer of considerable interest to all readers. SIX GOOD THINGS AT LITTLE PRICES In our last issue we took this page to bring before readers two remarkably attractive Combination Offers. Elsewhere it will be seen that the time for accepting these offers has been extended. We now make Another Great Offer. Great Round World, 1 year the weekly Brief" of the World's Events. American Monthly $2.00 Review of Reviews, 1 year $2.50 a delightful publication, $4.50 (See following page.) has quickly pushed to the front. Gives good Post 14-kt. Gold Fountain Pen $3.00 the best in the world. We've sold thousands, Rand-McNally Atlas $1.00 their latest "standard," accurate, complete. Regular price for these six things is $12.50 $5.20! (Your check will be accepted.) McClure's Magazine may be substituted for Current Literaturę. Embrace the opportunity while these phenomenally cheap offers are fresh in yonr mind. RULES The periodicals will be sent to one address or to different addresses. The subscriptions may be either NEW or RENEWALS (except Review of Reviews and Current Literature), which must be NEW NAMES in each and every case. No mixing of the offers allowed. No periodicals can be substituted except as follows: McClures's Magazine, Leslie's Monthly (new), Current Literature and Review of Reviews (new) may be substituted one for the other, in these offers. Either Pearson's or Cosmopolitan may be substituted for any magazine (not the Atlas) in the above offers, except The Great Round World and Success. THE GREAT ROUND WORLD CO., 150 Fifth Avenue, New York, CURRENT HISTORY The Turkish HOME NEWS. Turkey has not, at this writing, signed the contract with the Cramps by which she is to pay the indemnity claims of our Government. The belief is growing in Government circles that the visit. of the Kentucky to Smyrna has not had the desired effect after all. The basis of the fear that the Sultan will not come to terms is that Great Britain, influenced by the prospective success of the United States, has seized the present moment to urge her claims for an Armenian indemnity. If the Sultan thinks that the payment of the American indemnity will bring other European claimants to the front, he will probably return to his old policy of delay. Turkey, meanwhile, has shown a disposition to go back to her former active hostility to non-Mussulmans. It is reported that 200 Christians have recently been massacred somewhere in the central provinces of the country. The Sultan has also issued an order forbidding Hebrew pilgrims from remaining in Palestine more than three weeks at a time. Doubtless this order is aimed against the Zionist movement, the object of which is to settle the Holy Land with Hebrews. President McKinley has appointed as Minister to Turkey Mr. John G. A. Leishman, now Minister to Switzerland. Mr. Arthur S. Hardy, the present Minister to Greece, Roumania and Servia, will succeed Mr. Leishman in Switzerland, and Mr. Hardy will be succeeded by Mr. Charles S. Francis, of New York. A New Minister to Mr. Oscar S. Straus, former Minister to Turkey, resigned his post because the work for which he was especially appointed had been completed. After his appointment two and one-half years ago he secured recognition for the United States Consul at Erzeroum, gained the right for American citizens to travel wherever they please in Tur key, and compelled the Sultan to admit the validity of the indemnity claims. Consul Gummere of Tangier has informed our Government that Morocco has settled the claim of the United States for an indemnity of $5,000 on account of Morocco Pays Up. the murder of Marcos Essagin (see issue of December 20, page 364). The presence of the training-ship Dixie may have had something to do with the prompt settlement, but it is likely that the chief reason for the payment is that the young Sultan hopes for the moral backing of the United States in the approaching crisis between Morocco and France. The encroachments of France on the hinterland of Morocco (see Volume XV., page 49) are likely to result in acute trouble. Essagin, it will be remembered, was manager of a French business house in Fez. He was of French birth, but had been naturalized in the United States. One of our contemporaries recently published an account of some enormous steamships being built at Groton, Conn. It was stated that these leviathans will The Development each be of of ten thousand tons more of the Steamship. displacement than the Deutschland, that they will be able to carry twenty-eight thousand tons of coal, and are to convey cattle, chilled and frozen meats, fruit, or any kind of cargo. There are to be accommodations for one thousand passengers, and the speed is to be fourteen knots an hour. Desiring to verify these statements, we wrote to our correspondent in Groton. His reply is as follows: "The shipyard of the Eastern Shipbuilding Company is a fact and it is located in Groton, Conn. The company has already commenced to build two ships, the largest in the world. "It is a remarkable coincidence in the history of Groton that in the year 1600 some men came over from England looking for a place to build the largest ship in the world. They located in Groton not far from the present yard and built a ship of 750 tons, then the largest in the world." Curious, is it not, how history repeats itself? In the course of a few years it may be impossible for mammoth carriers to enter New York harbor, unless the bar is, meanwhile, partly removed. The French Gun The incident of the disclosure to the United States War Department of the secrets of the new French field gun has already been almost forgotten in the rush of other events (see issue of November 22, page 231). But public interest in the matter has lately been renewed by the way in which the French Government has given denial to the charge that Lieutenant William S. Sims, former United States Naval Attache at Paris, was responsible for the betrayal of the secret. When the excitement over the matter was at its height in France, the anti-Government press accused Lieutenant Sims anonymously. He was not named, but the description of him was unmistakable. La Presse said of him, among other things: "He acted almost openly as a spy for several Powers." Now the news is published that the French Minister of Foreign Affairs, M. Delcassé, has offered to Lieutenant Sims the cross of the Legion of Honor. This would not be done, were the former Attache suspected. Lieutenant Sims is now on the battleship Kentucky. Since he is an active official of the Government, he cannot accept the cross, unless with the consent of Congress. Naval Contracts The Navy Department has made the awards of contracts for eleven armored warships whose construction was authorized some time ago (see issue of December 6, page 299). The Cramps and the Newport News Company will each build one sheathed and one unsheathed cruiser of twenty-two knots speed and one sheathed battleship. The Union Ironworks Company of San Francisco (the Scotts, who built the Oregon) will build one sheathed and one unsheathed cruiser. The Fore River Engine Company, of Quincy, Massachusetts, will build two unsheathed battleships, and the Bath Works of Bath, Maine, will build one sheathed battleship. The Scotts made no offer for the battleships, but their |