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GENERAL NEWS NOTES OF THE DAY. The- remnrkable pica of Pope Benedict to the warring nations to cense tlielr slaughter was given to the world yesterday ami became one of the greatest documents in history. The appeal Wiis 1 written in the Iopes own handwriting and cited his unceasing efforts to bring about peace, lie asks: "Is tills civilized world to he nothing more than a field of death? And Europe, so glorious and so flourishing, is it going as if stricken by a universal madness to run the abyss and to lend its hand to its own suicide?" His holiness then offers the following concrete points as a basis upon which the warring nations can agree for a just peace: Diminution of armament. Arbitration to replace war. Freedom of the seas guaranteed. Keparatious to nations for damages. Evacuation of Belgium. Conciliatory discussion to settle Italian and Austrian questions. Negotiations and discussion to settle Armenian ami Balkan problems. A detailed plan for advertising the next issue of liberty loan bonds in newspapers anil other mediums of publicity to cost from ,000,000 to ,000,000, and to he paid for by the government, was presented yesterday to Secretary McAdoo by the national advertising advisory board of the Associated Advertising Clubs of the World, with the recommendation that it be adopted. On the basis of an expenditure of ,000,000 the following distribution of the fund was suggested: Daily, monthly and weekly papers, including those printed in foreign languages, 00,000; farm papers, 00,-000; small town dailies and weeklies. 00,000; printed posters, circulars, etc., 00,000. The mediums which the board proposes to use are detailed as follows: Newspapers, magazines, farm papers, business press, religious press, foreign language press, painted bulletins, billboards, street cars, circularizations, house organs and factory bulletins. Constitutionality of the selective draft law and the right of the government to draft not only citizens, but entire national guard organizations into the federal service was upheld by Federal Judge AVestenhaver at Cleveland, in one of the most important military decisions since the civil war. The military decision is the first of its kind since amendment of the law and comes us authoritative reply to objectors who have insisted the act is unconstitutional. Judge AVestenhaver made public his opinion, following his dismissal of a petition for a writ of habeas corpus for John Hackenberg, Akron guardsman, who sought release from the guard on the claim he is a minor and an alien, being a subject of Austria. It is learned from dispatches from Copenhagen that the German commercial submarine Dcntseh-land, which visited the United States before that country entered the war, has been converted into a Avar submarine, according to German fleet gossip reaching the Associated Iress. The Dcutschland has a great radius of action and has been fitted with six torpedo tubes. The submarine, it is said, may soon leave for the Pacific to operate against traffic from San Francisco. The U-boat was to have started activities some time ago, but an explosion on board while the vessel was on a trial trip made necessary repairs which took considerable time. President Wilson is expected to answer the pontiffs peace plea witli a statement showing the world why the allies must fight on so long as the Herman autocracy exists. According to his advisors there is only one course open to him. They say unless present signs fail lie will restate more emphatically than ever that the United States wars against Germanys autocratic system its intrigue and horrors rather than with any aim of crushing the German people themselves. It is expected to be another bid to the German liberals to cast off the yoke of kaiserdom and effect a new government shorn of schrecklichkeit. "Germany now is barely able to hold her own not even that," Premier Lloyd George declared in his speech to the house of commons, according to a dispatch from London yesterday. The premier said that this time last year the wheat in this country amounted to 51.810,000 bushels and that now it is 08,000,000 bushels. The stock of oats and barley, he declared, also was higher. "The government has come to the conclusion," Lloyd George said, "that with reasonable economy there is no chance of starving England out. The admiralty plans for dealing with submarines have been increasingly successful." The Chinese government, a Renter dispatch from Peking says, is arranging for the prompt liquidation if the German-Asiatic Bank. Five officials of the foreign otiice have been appointed to take over the accounts and cash here and in the Shanghai, Canton, Tientsin and Hankow branches. Chinese troops have seized Austrian concessions in Tientsin, according to an Exchange Telegraph dispatch, and German and Austrian shipping is being seized at Canton, Amoy, Swatow, Shanghai and Nanking. The vessels include several small warships. Discovery of plantinum in Alaska by Dr. Ilerschel C. Parker of New York and others, has aroused government agencies to the greatest activity in the hope of finding sufficient quantities of the precious metal to meet the war needs of the allies. Four government experts have been assigned to study the Alaskan situation and report if the discoveries may replenish the platinum supply, cut off recently by the virtual cessation of activities in the Ural mountain mines, the source of the worlds greatest supply. From Finland comes word that disorders, occasioned by the scarcity of food, have led to a cabinet crisis. The senators have requested the governor-general to transmit their resignations to the provisional government. The governor-general has asked M. Tokoi, vice-president of the department of economics and former president of the diet, to form a socialist cabinet. He has accented. A general strike has been declared. In an effort to curb treasonable and seditious utterances by soap box orators every loyal and patriotic man and woman in New York was asked yesterday to help organize local vigilance committees. Through the police departments 100 other cities in the United States are to be asked to join the movement started by the American Defense Society, which announced that the "gutter oratory" in New York must stop. In three sectors of the Franco-Belgian front the French and British have won new successes in tlieir offensive operations, which are once more in full swing. Attacks were made by the British in Belgium near Ypres, by the French on the Aisne front and near Dixmude in Belgium. According to Berlin, the Allies attacked in Belgium on an eleven-mile front. French troops in Belgium, attacking early yesterday, according to a dispatch from Paris, in conjunction with the Britisli on both sides of the road between Steenstraete and Dixmude, captured all their objectives and crossed the Steenbeke river. The French made an attack on the Aisne and captured German trendies on a front of one kilometer. Four German counter attacks were repulsed. The department of justice, it was stated yesterday, is prepared to deal swiftly and severely with activities in the northwest and elsewhere of the Industrial Workers of the World, in so far as they relate to the stoppage or curtailment of production in industries whose continuation is deemed essential to the prosecution of the war. The Germans are now fighting with tenacity to maintain their precarious hold on the central portion of Lens. Throughout the day they have been bringing up fresh troops with which to carry on counter attacks, is the latest news from the Canadian headquarters in France. The Italian merchant marine losses for the week ended August 12 comprises six steamers and live sailing vessels, one of the latter being above 100 tons. Five hundred and fifty vessels of all nationalities, of a tonnage of 339,245, entered Italian ports, and 509, of a tonnage of 414,775, left. Neither the war nor the navy department at Washington has any information on the reported wounding of American troops on the western front. Prompt official announcement is promised when information is received, provided it is not incompatible with military interest. The coming Winter will hold Sweden in a terrific grip and the people of the country are facing the cold weather with dread, according to lelir Goesta Norberg, special correspondent of the Swedish Telegraph Agency of Stockholm, who has just arrived in this country from Sweden. Four tons of bombs were dropped by airplanes Tuesday morning on the Martime Arsenal at Venice, causing a number of conflagrations, according to the official stutement of the Austrian war office. Loans of 40,000,000 to Italy and ,900,000 to Belgium were made by the United States government yesterday, bringing the total thus far advanced to the allies up to ,916,400,000. Pope Benedict has Germanys peace terms, according to a prominent politician quoted by the Lokal Anzeiger, who declares he the Pope has surely informed Germanys enemies of them. According to the London Daily News, some wounded American soldiers from the western front liaye just arrived at the hospital at JiatK
