UNITED STATES.

Taranaki Daily News, 7 December 1916, Page 5

UNITED STATES.

I j THE ARABIA NOTE. r '* MORE TALK; NO ACTION, ' * Received Dee. 6, 8 p.m. '*'•' • New York, Dec. 3. Mr. Gerard has sailed for Berlin. /,; Washington, Dec. 5. Germany has preliminarily replied to £he Arabia Note, claiming that the iArabia was a transport. American officials do not expect a serious crisis, but anticipate a controversy regarding tbe |bnract|r of the vessel. ■ fc " : IifcSSAGE TO CONGRESS. ,'V •'''; Renter Service. , v t " Washington, Dec. 5. rr«Httht Wilson has delivered his frneseage' to Congress, which was the shortest on record. It dealt exclusively with fbmestic affaire, mainly the regulation of railway labor on the basis of an eight-hour day. He advocated Mi amendment' of the law authorising labor ftsputes to be fully and publicly investigated before a strict lock-out jfcould be lawful. 'Jhe country,; he said, could not retain exposed t£ profound, industrial (lis|nrl)«o<»s for lack of the additional uicftnß bf arbitration and conciliation rh'cft Congress could easily supply. The proposal whereby the working of the railways should not be stopped or in"twrnpted by tie concerted action of organised! bodies of men until a public investigation, had been instiuted for the purpose'Of explaining the whole question to national opinion involved no new jrinciple. The President also recommended a law ' Civing greater freedom of combination to those engaged in tbe promotion of foreign commerce than the present lawa Cjfsinit monopoly permitted. MAETERLINCKS APPEAL. < .. ~~ . New York, Dec. 5. Maeterlinck, the Belgian dramatist, lends a message to the American people urging America to place herself at the htad of if League of Neutrals with a policy of'action, not of protest, to force Germany to cease her inhuman policy. Ho mentions that 40,000 Belgians are under forced labor at the point of the bayonet digging German trenches at the back of Soiseons. They work in the first Jine trenches under fire.