People We Hear About

New Zealand Tablet, 27 May 1915, Page 41

People We Hear About

Like his father and-uncle/ the late King Leopold, the King of the Belgians is a man of great, stature. He is taller than the late King by half an inch. ■ Lady Nelson, whose horse, 'Ally Sloper,' won the Grand National this year, is a Catholic and an Irishwoman. The wife of Sir William Nelson, Bart, Lady Nelson is by birth a Westmeath woman. Like most of her countrywomen, especially in that part of Ireland, she has all the national fondness for horses. Said to have been the oldest priest in the world, the Right Rev. Abbot Don Anacleto Salazar, C.R.L., died on March 18 at Onate, Spain. He was within four months of completing his 104th year. Abbot Salazar, who was born in July, 1811, was ordained in 1835, thus having spent eighty years in the priesthood. On his 100th birthday Don Salazar was raised to the abbatial dignity, and on that day he sang Pontifical High Mass. A Manchester newspaper says that it was on a subject connected with soldiering that Hilaire Belloc made his first hit in Parliament. The House was discussing artillery training, and Belloc began to tell how the French artilleryman is taught to ride. 'While he was talking there could be seen and felt that lamblike and teachable mood which comes over the House of Commons when a man is ... not arguing,, so to speak, but telling them.' As Belloc himself served as an artillery conscript in the French Army, he was quite able to ' tell them.' That indeed is the chief charm of his writing or speaking on military subjects-you feel that the man is talking of something he knows all about. The London Sketch has a pleasant story to tell of Cardinal Bourne: General French's brief record of Cardinal Bourne's visit to France may be supplemented by the account of an officer who met the prelate near the British lines. The Cardinal was for going into the danger zone: the officer into whose care the Cardinal had been committed was against it. ' The shells, are dropping all along that road,' the military man explained, ' and if we went on, the car would stand a very good chance of being hit and your Eminence of being killed.' ' J would not object to making a paragraph in the history of the war,' said the smiling Cardinal, still anxious to go forward. 'But what about me?' asked the other, with a laugh. 'lf I neglected my duty and led you into danger I shouldn't deserve even a footnote.' The outstanding figure among those who have kept the world informed of the events leading up to the war and are now depicting its background with Continental diplomacy, is the distinguished Dublin man, Dr. Emile J. Dillon, for" over a quarter of a century special foreign correspondent of the Daily Telegraph. The late Mr. W. T. Stead believed Dr. Dillon to be the grea-test living journalist. He is a wonderful linguist. At the age of eight he was a student of Hebrew. He is probably the only living journalist who has written leading articles in papers of England, Russia, France, and Germany, lie has graduated at three European Universities, and has studied at seven. In St. Petersburg which was mainly Dr. Dillon's headquarters for some years prior to the war, he was the only private individual able to receive an uncensored British newspaper. The news of the death of Daniel Harrington, proprietor of the Kerry Sentinel, Tralee, will be received with deep regret by a wide circle of friends. The sad event occurrd on April 5, after a very brief illness. The late Mr. Harrington, who was a native ol Castletownbere, was a brother of the late Timothy Harrington, M.P., a former Lord Mayor of. Dublin, and the late Edward Harrington, who had been a member of Parliament for many years. An able journalist and an uncompromising Nationalist, in his conduct of the Kerry Sentinel, he maintained the traditions of the esteemed founder of that journal, the late Mr. T. Harrington*