People We Hear About

New Zealand Tablet, 11 April 1912, Page 41

People We Hear About

Vi .The. German Reichstag . elected" Dr. Spahn, the Centre Party. leader' President; Herr Scheidemann, Socialist First Vice-President; and Herr Paasche, National Liberal, Second Vice-President. Owing to the election of a Socialist as First Vice-President. Dr Spahn resigned. '-•*« ■ i Lau f e “ ce O’Loughlin, who has been appointed Speaker of the South Australian Parliament has . spent more than half of the twenty years he has been in .politics on ;the Treasury benches. He is 58 years of age, is a native of South Australia, and was educated by the Christian Brothers, Adelaide. . -At the annual dinner of the Catholic Association ; n ., the Hotel Cecil, London, Sir Charles Santley contributed to the musical programme, his appearance being greeted with prolonged applause. The veteran , artist, whose 78 years have hardly commenced to tell adversely upon the wonderful voice which has delighted decades of music lovers, contributed ‘The Rosary’ (Nevin) and ‘To Anthea ’ (Hatton). In response to persistent applause Sir Charles sang ‘Simon the Uellarer with surprising vivacity. £;• Mr, Hilaire Belloc, the distinguished London iournabst, whose articles in the Speaker , the Daily News, the defunct Tribune, and the Morning Post have attracted much attention, is a fervent Catholic and was' originally a French citizen.. He is now only in his 42nd year, and some little time back he undertook. the editorship of The Eye Witness. : To-day he is one ; of the ablest essayists in the English language. He is also a member of the Catholic. Education Council, and for four years sat as Liberal M.P. for South Salford. His wife is an American, and was Miss Hogan, of San Francisco, , ■> . . " The daily paper (remarks London Tah'let) which speaks of Mrs. Mary-Rodney Morgan (who has died at Berne, aged 94) as the ‘last of the heroic English nurses who did such great service during the Crimean war,’ has passed over two English convents. The Convent and Hospital of St. John and St. Elizabeth at St'. John’s Wood has in the venerable Mother Mary Joseph Stanislaus a survivor of the English Sisters of Mercy who accompanied Florence Nightingale to Scutari; and Mother St. George, at the ■ Convent of the Faithful Virgin at Norwood, still well recalls the day in 1854 when she left that house of her Order at Bishop Grant’s urgent request for volunteers to reinforce the Sisters o Mercy, Irish and English. : > Mother Stanislaus 'is 89, and Mother St, George 84. ; . At the anti-Horne Rule meeting in Sydney some or the speakers made the usual charges about the disloyalty of Catholics. This drew from Mr. M. Meagher, Bathurst, a letter to the daily press, in which he said : i have no intention of entering into a discussion on this subject with any of these gentlemen. Few, if 5 any' Catholics would be so foolish. But, sir; with your permission, I should like' to point out that at the recent Coronation of the King of England most of the important offices were held by Catholics. Let me give a few instances : The Earl Marshal of • England, the Huke of Norfolk, who was director-in-chief of all the events in connection with the King’s crowning, is a Catholic his three suffragans of the Herald’s College Messrs. Everard Green, Edward Bellasis, and Ambrose Lee, are Catholics. The Chief Commissioner of Police"' Sir Edward Henry, is a Catholic. The artist-super-visor of the decorations on the Royal route, Mr Frank Brangwyn, A.R.A., is a Catholic-' Mr. John H. L .■Bacon, A.R.A., who was commissioned to paint the Coronation scene in the Abbey, is a Catholic; while the music of another Catholic, Sir Edward Elgar had a conspicuous place : in . the ceremony. V| And by the way, three out of the five overseas Prime Ministers present were Catholics. All these “Romans” must have practised a mighty amount, of mental reservation on the question of loyalty, in order to obtain this dis- :