Weekly journal-miner., 1911-11-01
ACCIDENTS
 CRIPPLE FRENCH NAVY
Queen of Belgium Has Undertaken To Revive or Preserve the Failing
 Brussels Lace Industry

PARIS, France, Oct. 26.-Ter strange accidents have occurred il , the French navy within a year, fire: on shipboard, shells bursting pre-
 maturely, guns exploding while al
 practice, eliminating in the sinking
 of the battleship La Liberte while
 at anchor in Toulon harbor. The
 fire on La Liberte broke out near
 the apparatus for flooding the for.
 ward magazine which afterward ex. ploded, so near that the flooding
 machinery could not be used. This
 circumstance has seemed odd to in- quirers, and even more singular was
 the breaking out of fires the same
 morning on the Patrie and on the
 Suffren, two other battleships. The
 official inquiry will endeavor to es-
 tablish the facts, but in the mean
 time sinister differences are in cir
 culation. Either there is a certain
 want of preeaution which is a theory
 rejected by admirers of the navy, or
 the accidents have been caused with
 malign purpose.
 Upon the latter supposition the de- struetive accidents might have been
 melted by the eommunistie revol-
 utiOnary propaganda carried on III
 the navy by civilian agitators or
 they may have been detached acts
 of embittered individuals in private
 rebellion against society and all au-
 thority. Scarcely a day throughout
 the year passes in France without
 acts of simple destruetiveness af-
 feeting the public, such as the cutting of telegraph and telephone wires, the deranging of railway switches or the placing of obstacles on tracks The French have a word of their own for these acts. It is "sabotage." " The word is scarcely transferable, although akin to vandalism. In col leetive movements the first step :s to complain to the Government or the corporation, the second is to demonstrate' by procession or meeting and the next is to destroy something-the vinyards in the cham pagne provinces, the provision shops in Northern France or the railway stations, as has happened on the Western railway, because the sub urban trains were usually behind their schedule.
 Now those who know the French navy and believe thoroughly in the excellent spirit and discipline that generally pervades the service, ae- cept the idea of coincidence in the number of violent happenings and attribute them where not purely ac- eidental to ''sabotage."
 Queen Elizabeth of Belgium has undertaken to revive or preserve the failing Brussels lace industry. Al though Brussels lace is admired and 1 worn quite as much probably as 1t | ever was, the industry is a fading | one. The girls of Belgium prefer | to do something else. The small pro- fits. the effect on the eyesight and | the long apprenticeship required to do good work drive them into other | callings. The picturesque old-fashioned | laee-worker type has almost disap- | peared from Belgium so that the mak- ing of genuine Brussels lace is be- coming a lost industry. The Queen | has formed a cooperative society to study how to make the lot of work CTS in lace more attractive, to find | markets, especially in | the United States, and to encourage | laee-making courses in the industrial | schools Queen Elizabeth has capital | ized her company for $27,000, which has been subscribed by some of the wealthiest men of Belgium, including Count de Merode, Ernest Solvay. ''the Soda King" the Minister of State, Beernaert; Baron Jansen and Baron Empain. The board contains several professors of the Univer sity of Brussells and the Queen $ secretary, M. Ingenbleek.
 A new terror has been added to the many in store for the unwary Amer ican tourist who patronizes the estab- lishments of Montmartre, The police has just discovered that a band of anarchist coiners has put in cireul- ation over 30,000 francs worth of bad five-frane pieces during the past month. The leader of the syndicate is an anarchist, Maria Llopis, who was condemned to death for her com plieity in the revolt in Barcelona which preceded the execution of Ferrer. The proceeds are probably for the anarchist cause. The coins are of unusually subtle manufacture, of practically the same al Ioy as the genuine ones, and poss- essing such slight defects that only an expert could have detected them; hence the facility with which they were put into circulation. They were made in Barcelona, two of the com pany going there every Friday, re- turning to Paris on Tuesday with a fresh supply, which they delivered to the other four who hastened to change them by making small pur- chases. These four are now safely under lock and key, but the two who brought the goods from Spain either received warning or stopped behind to participate in the recent outbreak, they holding anarehistie opinions like their chief.