Military-service cases of Herman F. Dietmann, Alfred Knudsen, Joseph Rinehart, George Rosebrock, John M. Munsch, and Hugo Wagner......... Military-service cases of Joseph Gresser, Rudolph Teutsch, Jens Cornelius Andersen, August Dalesch, George von Staden, Siegfried Zehden, Sieg- mund Wollenberg, Frederick H. Kruse, and Julius Burger Military-service cases of Peter F. Hinrichsen, Max Abel, F. P. and E. F. Waggershauser, Albert Ganslen (Gänsslen), and Philip Enoch Military-service cases of Lawrence M. Metzger, Francis Xavier Hossenlopp, Albert Ganslen (Gänsslen), Anton Esser, Otto Graul, Fritz Hillens, Hieronimus Bayer, Simon Moeller, Wilhelm Ritterhoff, and Alfred Military-service cases of Herman Karl, Adolph Brück, Heinrich Berns- Marriage between aliens in Prussia; requirement of certificate that no im- Samoan claims of French (and other) citizens; admission to arbitration.. Offer of use of hospital ship Maine for wounded German soldiers and sailors, and reciprocal action by German Trained Nurse Association.. Citizenship of children of an alien woman who married an American citi- zen and brought them to the United States. Condolences on Galveston disaster. Condolences on loss of German training ship Gneisenau at Malaga. Seizure by British authorities of merchandise of American shippers off the east coast of Africa, and restitution made on account thereof.. Exercise of good offices of United States consul in behalf of British pris- Award by British Government to Mrs. George F. Labram in recognition Passport application of A. M. Tracey Woodward, born abroad of American parents, and still residing without the United States. Income tax, missionaries' salaries held to be subject to payment of Income tax not required of officers and men of United States Navy and Marine Corps stationed at United States Naval Hospital at Yokohama.. Expressions of sympathy by Emperor and Empress of Japan for sick and wounded United States soldiers and sailors in Marine Hospital at Yoko- Water Boundary Convention between the United States and Mexico; extension, for an indefinite period, of the treaty of March 1, 1889.. Organization of the Permanent Court of Arbitration provided for by the convention signed at the Hague, July 29, 1899 - Arbitration of claims of American sealing vessels v. Russia; selection of Mr. Asser, member of council of state of the Netherlands, to act as Customs duties collected by insurgents while in temporary possession of Bluefields, and return of same to American merchants.. Claims of Orr and Laubenheimer and the Post-Glover Electric Company Protection of persons of Ottoman origin naturalized in the United States; Turkish Government refuses to recognize such naturalization.. Passports to be refused by legation to persons of Ottoman origin returning to Turkey unprovided with American passport or authenticated natural- MESSAGE. To the Senate and House of Representatives: At the outgoing of the old and the incoming of the new century you begin the last session of the Fifty-sixth Congress with evidences on every hand of individual and national prosperity and with proof of the growing strength and increasing power for good of Republican institutions. Your countrymen will join with you in felicitation that American liberty is more firmly established than ever before, and that love for it and the determination to preserve it are more universal than at any former period of our history. The Republic was never so strong, because never so strongly intrenched in the hearts of the people as now. The Constitution, with few amendments, exists as it left the hands of its authors. The additions which have been made to it proclaim larger freedom and more extended citizenship. Popular government has demonstrated in its one hundred and twenty-four years of trial here its stability and security, and its efficiency as the best instrument of national development and the best safeguard to human rights. When the Sixth Congress assembled in November, 1800, the population of the United States was 5, 308,483. It is now 76,304,799. Then we had sixteen States. Now we have forty-five. Then our territory consisted of 909,050 square miles. It is now 3,846,595 square miles. Education, religion, and morality have kept pace with our advancement in other directions, and while extending its power the Government has adhered to its foundation principles and abated none of them in dealing with our new peoples and possessions. A nation so preserved and blessed gives reverent thanks to God and invokes His guidance and the continuance of His care and favor. In our foreign intercourse the dominant question has been the treatment of the Chinese problem. Apart from this our relations with the powers have been happy. The recent troubles in China spring from the antiforeign agitation which for the past three years has gained strength in the northern provinces. Their origin lies deep in the character of the Chinese races and in the traditions of their Government. The Taiping rebellion and the opening of Chinese ports to foreign trade and settlement disturbed alike the homogeneity and the seclusion of China. Meanwhile foreign activity made itself felt in all quarters, not alone on the coast, but along the great river arteries and in the remoter districts, carrying new ideas and introducing new associations among a primitive people which had pursued for centuries a national policy of isolation. The telegraph and the railway spreading over their land, the steamers plying on their waterways, the merchant and the missionary penetrating year by year farther to the interior, became to the Chinese mind types of an alien invasion, changing the course of their national life and fraught with vague forebodings of disaster to their beliefs and their self-control. For several years before the present troubles all the resources of foreign diplomacy, backed by moral demonstrations of the physical force of fleets and arms, have been needed to secure due respect for the treaty rights of foreigners and to obtain satisfaction from the responsible authorities for the sporadic outrages upon the persons and property of unoffending sojourners, which from time to time occurred at widely separated points in the northern provinces, as in the case of the outbreaks in Sze-chuen and Shan-tung. Posting of antiforeign placards became a daily occurrence, which the repeated reprobation of the Imperial power failed to check or punish. These inflammatory appeals to the ignorance and superstition of the masses, mendacious and absurd in their accusations and deeply hostile in their spirit, could not but work cumulative harm. They aimed at no particular class of foreigners; they were impartial in attacking everything foreign. An outbreak in Shan-tung, in which German missionaries were slain, was the too natural result of these malevolent teachings. The posting of seditious placards, exhorting to the utter destruction of foreigners and of every foreign thing, continued unrebuked. Hostile demonstrations toward the stranger gained strength by organization. The sect, commonly styled the Boxers, developed greatly in the provinces north of the Yang-Tse, and with the collusion of many notable officials, including some in the immediate councils of the Throne itself, became alarmingly aggressive. No foreigner's life, |