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New Zealand Tablet, Volume VI, Issue 310, 28 March 1879, Page 3

Captain Roudaire is al the present moment busily employed iv 11. <]c Lesseps' enterprise of creatiug a vast iulaud sea in Africa inf the gigantic natural basin which lies to the north of the Desert o Sahara. The country through which the projected caual would be cut is, it appears, entirely free from rocks or other obstacles. Switzerland has been admonished by the great powers not to allow itself t© become a refuge for the Communists ; and the Berne authorities have replied that they will banish any refugee trying to conspire on Swiss soil against neighbouring countries and sovereigns. The Russian language is to be taught in the middle schools iv Scrvia at Russian cost. The Servians (says a telegram) regard the Russian language as a patois of the old Servian, and show a disinclination to acquire it. Dipthcria is raging at Vienna aud in some districts of Hungary. In one town of 20,000 souls, 2,135 cases and 927 deaths arc reported. The police of Leipsic have offered a reward for the detection ot a writer of a postal-card addressed to Bebel, the Socialist Deputy in the Ileichstag, accusing him of abandoning the Socialistic flag, and no longer daring openly to avow himself a representative of 'the proscribed p.u'ty. Such communications, however, are frequent, and between the belief on the part of the Socialists that they are unjustly persecuted, and the relentless determination to crush them out on the part of Bismarck and his police, all Germany is in a state of agitation, of which the outcome is yet to be foreseen.