A BACKGROUND TO THE NEWS

Dominion, Volume 28, Issue 105, 28 January 1935, Page 7

A BACKGROUND TO THE NEWS

Climate in America One hundred people have been killed owing to storms in .the United States, where blizzards are raging from Maine to Minnesota. The climates which are found within the boundaries of the continental United States are extremely diverse. The whole of the country lies in the temperate zone, so that its temperatures range from those of the Arctic zone to torrid zone temperatures. Thus, in some parts of the country summer maximum temperatures have occurred surpassing any found within the tropics, and in otners the winter minimum temperatures have ■ rivalled those of the Arctic Most of the storms have occurred in the eastern provinces, where, because of the predominant winds, the Atlantic ocean frequently influences temperatures far inland. In summer the difference in temperatures between the northern and southern districts of this part is very slight, but in winter there is a great difference between them. In January the mean monthly temperature decreases northward at the rate of 2.7 degrees for each degree of latitude. The snowfall is generally heavy in the northern states, where the expense of keeping streets and rural highways open to traffic amounts to many millions of dollars every year. Bagpipes. The Prince of Wales, after learning to play the bagpipes from the King’s Piper, has now composed a slow march for pipe music. The bagpipe is a complex reed instrument of great antiquity. Its origin must be sought in very remote times. It can be traced in ancient Persia and by inference in Egypt, Chaldea and ancient Greece. The principle of the drone, that is, the beating-reed sunk some three inches down the pipe, was known to the Egyptians, and the instrument in Greece was alluded to by Plato and Aristophanes. It is known for certain that Nero had a passion for the hydraulus and the tibia utricularis, both forms of wind instruments. Roman soldiers introduced the instrument to Great Britain. In the foundations of a praetorian camp at Richborough has been discovered the small bronze figure of a Roman soldier playing the tibia utricularis. From England the bagpipe spread to Caledonia and Ireland, where it took root, identifying itself with the life of the people and becoming a military instrument held in great esteem by the Celtic races. The French had a version of the bagpipe known as the musette. As inflating the bag by breath was in that country deemed an ungraceful procedure, bellows were substituted, and the whole instrument was refined in appearance and tone quality to fit it for a more exalted position. Bagpipes are popular in India, where they have been enthusiastically adopted to supply the music cf native regiments. The Romanoffs and Kerensky. In his latest book, Kerensky alleges that the British Government in 1917 first offered asylum to the Tsar and his family, and then withdrew it owing to political pressure. When in 1917 the Soviet leaders learned that the Tsar had requested new ministers of the Duma to arrange for the departure of himself and his family to Great Britain, they called on the Government to put the Tsar and his family under arrest. Before their request could be dealt with, they gave orders to the railwaymen to stop the imperial train and authorised one of their representatives to arrest the Tsar. However, the arrest was duly performed by the new ministers themselves. As a result of a coup which prevented government being transferred to the Soviet party, in which Lenin was involved, Kerensky put himself forward as a candidate for the premiership, and became Prime Minister as well as Minister of War. His record in office is singularly barren. In fact, the only achievements of his administration were the declaration of Russia as a republic and the convocation at Moscow of a spectacular State Assembly representing all classes in the country and ail political groups. The Bolshevik revolution at last compelled him to leave for the German front to bring back Russian soldiers to quell the rebellion. He met with discouraging support, and an attack on all Soviet strongholds was repulsed. Trotsky then proclaimed the approaching civil war, and Kerensky fled, leaving the Bolshevik regime for a-, time immune from military menace.' The advance of the Czechoslovak and White Russian armies brought death to the ex-Tsar, Nicholas 11, who, with his wife and family, had been held under guard for some months in the foothills of the Urals. The local Soviet professed to believe that the imperial family was planning to escape to Omsk, and without a trial the Soviet voted to execute “Citizen and Citizeness Romanoff, their son, and four daughters.” The Spanish Inquisition. Revelations have been made of the torturing of Asturian prisoners with instruments resembling those used in the Spanish Inquisition. The Inquisition is broadly the name given to the ecclesiastical jurisdiction dealing both in the middle ages and in later times with the detection and punishments of heretics and all persons guilty of any offence against Roman Catholic orthodoxy. It was the result of, or rather one step in, a process of evolution, the beginnings of which are to be traced back to the fourth century at least. In Spain the Papal (inquisition only very slowly gained a footing. Spain had been, in turn or simultaneously, Arian under the Visigoths, Catholic under the Ilispano-Romans, Mohammedan by conquest, and under a regime of religious peace Judaism had developed there. After the reconqnest its heresies had been of minor importance. At the end of the 12th century, Alphonso II and Peter II had on principle promulgated cruel edicts against heresy, but-the persecution seemed to be dormant. By a bull of 1232 inquisitors were sent to Aragon by Pope Gregory IN on the request of Raymond of Penaforte, and by 1237-3 S the Inquisition was practically founded. The Spaniards were very quick to accept it to such an extent as to look on heresy as a national scourge to be destroyed at all costs, and they consequently considered it as a powerful and indispensable agent of public protection. As one of its results, commerce and industry within the country were rapidly paralysed by an odious regime of suspicion.