People We Hear About

New Zealand Tablet, 3 June 1915, Page 41

People We Hear About

Cardinal Farley, Archbishop of New York, was seventy-three years old on April 20. Surgeon-General Thomas-Maunsell, C. 8., received the degree of LL.D. (Honoris Causa) from the National University at a meeting of the Senate just held in Dublin. General Maunsell entered the Catholic University on the day it was opened by Cardinal Newman,; in 1854. - Captain Joseph Peter Lalor, who is one of the Victorian officers killed in the war, was a son of Mrs. Lalor, of ' Vaucluse, 5 Richmond, and of the late Dr. J. Lalor. His grandfather, the late Mr. Peter Lalor, M.L.A., was the leader of the miners at the Eureka Stockade insurrection at Ballarat in the early 'fifties. lie was afterwards Speaker of the Victorian Legislative Assembly. Captain Lalor was educated at Xavier College, Kew, where he was a student from 1892 till 1899. lie was an accomplished linguist, and had travelled extensively. He had seen considerable active service abroad. He was 30 years of age, and leaves a wife and son, who are at present in England. His Grace the Most Rev. Dr. Maguire, Archbishop of Glasgow, was the chief speaker at a gathering held in the Athenaeum Hall, Glasgow, to celebrate the anniversary of the birthday of King Albert of Belgium. The audience was mostly composed of Belgian refugees, and the meeting was presided over by Mr. P. S. Dunn, the Belgian Consul for the West of Scotland. The Archbishop, who at the outset spoke in French, paid a handsome and memorable compliment to the Belgian King. ' Strip him,' said his Grace, 'of his crown and robes and you will find a man.' From a simple, peace-loving monarch, living a quiet domestic life, King Albert has become a hero, taking his place in the trenches and mixing among his soldiers—he and his noble wife. She was, of course, a German, but she had forgotten that; she was a Belgian now. In this country we were also fortunate in having a good King— George V. —with a lofty sense of duty and example to us all. His Grace concluded: ' Your sons and our sons have died together on the field of battle. I believe the friendship between the two countries will never be broken. Long live the King and Queen of Belgium and the noble Due de Brabant.' All through the war the Queen of the Belgians has shown remarkable bravery, and the ' doing good ' which has always been a feature of her character has never once been interfered with. Her Majesty is a good musician, and the gift she thus possesses she shares generously. She shows herself as ready to play for the poor as for the King, who is, like herself, a lover of music. From her father, who specialised as an oculist, she learned much medical lore and gained a practical knowledge of hygiene and nursing. This knowledge is always at the people's disposal. In 1903 a great mining accident brought death and suffering to many houses in the Borinage. On the very day of the accident a motor car carried a gentle lady to the house of the stricken ones. Her words brought consolation to all before they discovered that she, who entered alone and spoke to them so simply, was the Queen. In one house a miner lay whose arm was badly damaged, and who was in imminent danger of blood-poisoning. With none but the miner's homely wife to aid her, she dressed his wounds and bandaged them, and returning speedily to Brussels, she dispatched to him her own doctor, whose ministrations saved his life.