Page:Collier's New Encyclopedia v. 07.djvu/427

PRISTIJSTA 351 PRIVET defeat on Kossovo Plain, about 30 miles further N. PRISTINA, a town of Serbia, 30 miles N. E. of Prisrend, administrative seat of a department of the same name in the S. E. part of Serbia, in the foothills of the mountains of Albania. After the in- vasion of Serbia by the Austro-German forces, in the latter part of November, 1915, the remnants of the defeated Ser- bian forces made their last stand here, on the edge of the great Kossovo Plain, where 300 years before the last of the Serbian Czars had been crushed. The battle lasted four days, the aged King Peter being in the field with his men dur- ing the whole period. Finally the Ser- bian battle formation was smashed, and Pristina was taken by the Teutons, un- der General Von Mackensen, on Nov. 23, j-915. The population, before the war, was about 10,000. PRITCHARD, JETER CONNELLY, associate justice of the Supreme Court of the District of Columbia; born in 1857, he engaged in the printing business as a young man and in 1873 became the editor of the "Roan Mountain Republican" of Bakersville, N. C. He took a prominent part in political affairs and though a Republican, was elected several times to the State Legislature of North Carolina. In 1895 he was elected to the United States Senate and re-elected in 1897, _As he was the only Southern Republican in the Senate his influence was consider- able. He undertook to build a white Re- publican party in the South, called the "Lily-White" party. Appointed asso- ciate justice in the District of Columbia in 1903. In 1912 he was appointed by President Taft to head the new Circuit Court of Appeals of the District of Co- lumbia. PRITCHETT, HENRY SMITH, an American educator and head of the Car- negie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching since 1906; born in Missouri in 1857, he took up, after his graduation from college, the study of astronomy, becoming in 1878 assistant astronomer in the United States Naval Observatory in Washington. In 1882, he traveled tp New Zealand to observe the tran- sit of Venus. The next year Washing- ton University, St. Louis, Mo., appointed him professor of astronomy, a position he held until 1897. For the three years, 1897 to 1900, he was superintendent of the United States Coast and Geodetic Survey. From 1900 to 1906 he was president of the Massachusetts Insti- tute of Technology in Boston, Mass. PRIVATEER, a ship owned by a private individual, which under govern- ment permission, expressed by a letter of marque, makes war on the shipping of a hostile power. To make war on an enemy without this commission, or on the shipping of a nation not specified in it, is piracy. Privateering was abol- ished by mutual agreement among Eu- ropean nations, except Spain, by the Declaration of Paris in 1856; but the United States of America refused to sign the treaty, except on condition that all private property at sea, not contra- band, should be exempt from capture. This "Marcy," or "American," amend- ment, as it was called, was not accepted. This doctrine was again affirmed by the United States delegates to the Peace Conference at The Hague in 1898, but was again rejected by the European pow- ers. While not considered Piracy iq- v.) by the law of nations, they were looked on as little better during the great wars at the end of the 18th and the beginning of the 19th century, and as a rule re- ceived but scant mercy at the hands of the regular services. HENRY SMITH PRITCHETT PRIVET (Ligustrum), a genus o± plants of the natural order Oleacex, containing a number of species of shrubs and small trees with opposite leaves, which are simple and entire at the mar-