The Birmingham age-herald., 1911-06-18
LANDLORDS PLACE
 BAN ON CHILDREN Will Not Rent to Families
 Thus Encumbered KAISER WEARS CHARM Ring in More SuperstitiOns Times Was Believed to Have Power of
 Protection-Terrible Bath
 ing Tragedy
KAISER WEARS CHARM
By MALCOLM CLARKE

Berlin, June 17.--(Special )-Many land lords of dwelling housees and flats here have placed the ban on children and re- fuse to accept as tenants people who have children. They seem to have enter ed into an agreement here and in many other cities and towns.
 It has become a public scandal house. hold owners refuse to let married cou- ples having children, and the authorities fear that this policy will have bad effect upon the birth rate.
 Pet dogs cats and birds are seldom refused, but babies are regarded as out side the pale. The emperor is said to have decided to take hand In the cru sade and stop the blaclklisting of little ones
 The kaiser generally wears ring which in more surestitious times was firmly believed to have supernatural power to protect it's wearer from harm of any kind. This Hohenzollern talisman, as it has been called, is of massive gold, in which is set a square, dark-colored stone. It's history goes back to the time when the Margrafs of Nuremberg fol- lowed their leaders to the capture of the Holy Sepulchre from the Moslems. The ring, which was taken from a Moslem during the fight under the walls of Jeru- salem, eventually reached the hands of the Margraf Ulrich, and from him it de- scended through generation after genera ton of his successors until it came to the kaiser. When 1t was first won 1t had engraved on the stone a sentenced from the Koran. This was cut out later and replaced by cross.
 In spite of the disastrous outcome of the recent attempt to cross the Atlantic by airship, another effort to accomplish this feat is to be made. This time, Ger mans instead of Americans will make the attempt Messrs. Simens and Schuc- kert, the greatest electrical workers and engineers in Germany, are now engaged in constructing the airship, which is to be POO yards long, and 20 yards in diame- ter, and capable of carrying 50 passen- gers and crew. It will have eight motors. the aggregate energy of which will repre- sent 1000 horsepower.
 terrible bathing tragedy has plunged Seppenrade, Westphalia, into gloom. The other evening the village schoolmaster proposed to his pupils that they should have a swim in pool, although a pub lie warning had been issued on the dan gers of the pool it's depth being uncer- tain. The teacher, who was 56 years old, plunged in first and eight pupils followed. None of them could swim, but the teacher had said it would not make any differ ence, as the pool was only three feet deep, and presently the entire party went under and were drowned with the exception of one lad. The teacher is al most dimented because of grief. He has been unable to teach since the catas-i trophe of which he was indirectly the cause.
 The episode of the Russian request to Turkey to withdraw her troops from Montenegrin frontier has turned out, dip lomats here hold, to be a humiliating diplomatic defeat for the czar's govern ment
 The newspapers devote columns to dis patches from St. Petersburg and Constan- tinople describing the action of the Rus sian ambassador in hastening to assure the Turkish foreign minister that the Russian request was wholly of "friend- ly character and apoligizing for the bil- ligerent version of the request issued to the press This is regarded not only as grave blow to Russian prestige in the Balkans but as an unmistakable tribute to the backbone of the young Turk regime.
 Fifteen years ago the empire faced the problem of rural depopulation. While the population of towns of over 20OO in- habitants increased by 20000,000 between 1871 and 1905, the population of small country towns had fallen from 26,200,O00 to 25, 800 000. The people settled the prob lem by deserting the country for the towns To counteract this the govern ment set to work to extend peasant pro prietary, particularly in Eastern Ger many where large estates were most numerous. As result the population of those districts increa sed. The following figures illustrate the process:
 Inhabitants Inhabitants
 before after