A BACKGROUND TO THE NEWS

Dominion, Volume 28, Issue 167, 11 April 1935, Page 5

A BACKGROUND TO THE NEWS

Lord Privy Seal Mr. Anthony Eden, Lord Privy Seal, will not be able to attend the Conference at Stresa. The Lord Privy Seal may best be described as “the spare wheel” of the Cabinef, and therefore of considerable use in emergency. The duties pertaining to the office itself are for the most part formal. The Lord Privy Seal gives authority to the Lord Chancellor to use the Great Seal. The salary is £2OOO per annum. Attempts have been made to abolish the office on the ground of economy; but it is contended that offices of this character should be continued, and given to men of experience, whom it is desirable to have in the Cabinet. It is said also that such men are needed to undertake special work connected with no department in particular and to conduct inquiries of great importance. The Lord Privy Seal is usually selected in such cases. Whitsuntide. i The Government in Great Britain is striving to get the India Bill through the House of Commons before Whitsuntide. Whitsuntide is the week commencing with Whitsunday, the 50th day, and the seventh Sunday, after Easter Sunday. The name Whitsunday means “White Sunday.” It was first used in England about the time of the Norman Conquest, and is said to be derived from the white garments or chrisoms worn on this day by the newly baptised. In the Christian Church it commemorates the descent of the Holy Spirit on the Apostles on the Day of Pentecost as described in Acts: 2. Lake Maggiore. The conference between the Prime Ministers of Great Britain, France and Italy will meet on the height of Isola Bella Island in Lake Maggiore. This lake is 139 miles long and from half a mile to five and a half miles wide. It has a maximum depth of 1250 feet. Situated in northern Italy, mainly between Piedmont and Lombardy, and partly in the Swiss Canton of Ticino, it is 646 feet above sea-level. Isola Bella, which lies offshore from Stresa, is one of a group of four islands called the Borromean Islands after the ancient family of Borromeo. The castle on Isola Bella was built about 100 years ago by Count Vitoleo Borromeo. ( It has terraced gardens, fountains and grottoes. “Safe For Democracy.” “We fought to make the world safe for democracy,” Mr. Stanley Baldwin is reported as saying. In his address before Congress on April 2, 1917, declaring the United States to be at war with Germany, President Woodrow Wilson said: “. . . Our object is to.vindicate the principles of peace and justice in the life of the world as against selfish and autocratic power and to set up among the really free and self-governed peoples of the world such a concert of purpose and of action as will henceforth insure the observance of those principles. ... A steadfast concert for peace can never be maintained except by a partnership of democratic nations. . . . The world must be made safe for democracy.” Who’s Who. Mr. Ramsay MacDonald and Sir John Simon will be accompanied to the conference at Stresa by Viscount Cranbourne and Mr. William Strang. Robert Arthur James Cecil, Viscount Cranbourne (42), is the heir of the fourth Marquis of Salisbury, and thus is a grandson of the third Marquis of Salisbury (1830-1903), who was three, times Prime Minister. He is also related to Viscount Cecil of Chelwood (formerly Lord Robert Cecil), one of the world’s greatest advocates of the League of Nations, and the late Lord Balfour, better known as Mr. A. J. Balfour. The Cecil family has been in English politics! practically continuously since the days of Queen Elizabeth. Mr. William Strang (42), Counsellor at Moscow, since 1932, served in the Great War, and entered the Foreign Office in 1919. France’s Navy. The Supreme Council of Marine in France has decreed that heavy capital, ships shall form the backbone of the fleet in future, and that France cannot permanently accept the capital ship ratio allotted by the Washington Treaty (1922). That Treaty defined for Great Britain, the United States, Japan, France and Italy what their replacement tonnage would be for capital ships. The maximum displacement of such ships was fixed at 35,000 tons, and their heaviest armaments at the 16in. gun. France was allowed to retain 10 capital ships, and agreed to. accept a replacement tonnage of 175,000 tons (the same as Italy), provided she was allowed a larger proper-, tion of auxiliary craft (cruisers under 10,000 tons, flotilla leaders, destroyers and submarines). This attitude prevented any agreement on limitation Of auxiliary craft. Also France opposed, as did Italy, Japan and the United States, a British proposal to abolish the submarine. Since the Washington Conference, France has devoted her attention to the building of flotilla leaders and submarines. £ Pack Ice. £ Two whale catchers were caught recently in pack ice, the sides collapsing and the vessels being lost. Not till the temperature falls to 28 degrees Fahrenheit, or thereabouts, does the sea freeze. When it does it forms an ice differing in many ways from land ice. A layer of fresh-water ice two or three inches thick is strong enough to skate upon, but a layer of sea ice of the same thickness is soft like glue anil will not bear a child. Under the influence of tides and wind this ice breaks into hexagonal fragments a few inches or feet in diameter. These again get knocked about and thicken with the frost, and become what is called “pancake ice.” These in turn get frozen together, break again, and are again congealed together. Finally a pancake patchwork of thick white ice is formed strong enough to resist the efforts of the sea to break it. If the sheet is large it is called “floe ice”; if it extends continuously farther than the eye can see, “field ice.” When fields and floes break up they first fracture into small floes, but these again split up into fragments mostly a few feet in diameter. In this condition the ice is known as "pack ice.” Pack ice drifts before the wind until the separate pieces are again welded by frost into fields or floes. Often the pieces are hurled together in heaps; and when they freeze together we get what is known as “hummocky” ice.