Peninsular & Oriental liner Persia was torpedoed by
a submarine, probably Austrian, in the Mediterranean about 300 miles
northwest of Alexandria, and sank in five minutes. One hundred and
fifty-five out of the 400 passengers and crew were landed at Alexandria
on January 1, and eleven others were subsequently reported safe. Among
those lost was Robert N. McNeely, who was on his way to take up his
duties as American consul at Aden.

FROM BERLIN TO CONSTANTINOPLE

By the middle of January German engineers had succeeded in repairing the
railroad bridges and roadbed destroyed during the Serbian campaign and
thus reopened direct communication between Berlin and Constantinople.

CANADIAN PARLIAMENT BUILDING BURNED

On the night of February 3 the beautiful Gothic structure which housed
the Canadian Parliament at Ottawa--the architectural pride of the
Dominion--was wrecked by a fire which started in a reading room adjacent
to the chamber of the House of Commons. Six persons, two of them women
friends of the Speaker's family, lost their lives. The House was in
session when the fire broke out, and many members and other occupants of
the building escaped narrowly and with great difficulty. The money loss
from the fire was enormous, and priceless paintings, books and national
documents were destroyed.

Opinions differed as to the causes of the fire, but the occurrence
about the same time of several highly suspicious fires in Canadian
munition factories and the unexplained rapidity with which the
Parliament Building fire spread with mysterious volumes of suffocating
smoke, caused widespread suspicion that the disaster was of incendiary
and enemy origin. A tidal wave of resentment flooded the Dominion and
deep feeling was aroused against men of German birth or extraction
remaining in Canada, some of them occupying public positions of
responsibility. A Commission was appointed by the Government to
investigate the causes of the fire, and, pending its report, official
denials were made that German spies had anything to do with the burning
of the Houses of Parliament. These denials, however, failed to convince
the Canadian people that German sympathizers were entirely innocent of
any participation in the origin of the conflagration.

The ruined building was the central structure of the magnificent group
of Government buildings at Ottawa, and one of the finest examples
of Gothic architecture on the Continent. The Library of Parliame