When taken to a hospital Matthews related the story of a dream in which he was captured by a gang of ruffians who were making preparation to torture him.
Quickly taking a revolver he pulled the trigger and emerged from his dream. The revolver had been under his pillow.
Korean Plotters Get Heavy Sentences.
Heavy sentences were imposed on many of the 123 Korean prisoners charged with conspiring against the life of Governor General Count Terauchi, of Korea.
Baron Yun Chi Ho, formerly a cabinet minister, and several others of the more prominent among the accused, were sent to prison for ten years, while various terms[{62}] of punishment were inflicted on all the other prisoners, except nine, who were released.
The introduction into the Korean conspiracy trial of the names of several American missionaries, prominent among them Bishop Merriman C. Harris, of the Methodist Episcopal Church, attracted worldwide attention to the case. The trial began on June 28, and some of the prisoners, nearly all of whom were Christian converts, made confessions implicating the missionaries, which they afterward withdrew, as they declared they had made them under torture.
The Japanese government and the Korean officials disavowed at all times suspicion of any complicity on the part of the missionaries in the plot. They also declared they had viewed the missionaries’ labors in Korea with favor.
Oppose Capital Punishment in Austria.
Opposition to capital punishment is gaining ground steadily throughout Austria. The advocates of absolution of the death penalty include several of the most powerful writers and speakers in the empire, and they are making the most of the fact that, while the congress of jurists voted 470 to 424 in favor of the retention of “legal murder” (as they are pleased to express it) this was really a moral victory for their cause. It most unquestionably was. Before the vote in congress it was not thought that more than a third of the jurists would support the resolution assailing the wisdom and legality of death sentences. Concerted action is to be taken to force the imperial government to adopt the issue and submit it to Parliament as an administration measure.