A BACKGROUND TO THE NEWS

Dominion, Volume 29, Issue 93, 14 January 1936, Page 7

A BACKGROUND TO THE NEWS

General Umberto Nobile

It is reported that General Umberto Nobile, famous Italian aviator and aeronautical engineer, is to be recalled by Mussolini from exile in Russia. At present Nobile is deputy chief of Soviet Airship Construction, a position he took several years ago by permission of the Italian Government after he had attained notoriety as Italy's outstanding disgrace. Nobile was once an Italian hero. He believed passionately in the future of lighter-than-air machines and he came to have a vyorld reputation as a designer of dirigibles. But his advocacy of his favourite type of air machine brought him the antagonism of certain Italian airmen and the jealousy of a man who was destined to be Air Minister at the time of his disgrace. Nobile was appointed leader of the Italian expedition which went in the dirigible Italia to the North Pole. Something happened and he and his companions were cast upon an ice-floe; he was saved by a Russian icebreaker. But Italy could not sympathise with his failure. An inquiry was instituted into the circumstances of the accident and rescue and Nobile, buoyed, up by semi-official and even oflieial information that all was going well, made no attempt to marshal a defence, even though the commission was composed of hostile persons. He learned of his condemnation from a morning paper. For some time he lived ia pathetic seclusion on the outskirts of Rome. He became a man nobody dared to know, for he was subjected to espionage and every visitor was reported to the police, every letter was opened, every telephone call overheard. Then he was offered the position he holds at present and the Italian Government gave its permission to an exile that was really voluntary. The “Round Table.”

Being used more and more frequently with application to diplomatic conferences, the term “Round Table” has an interesting origin. The “TabletRound” of poetic fame, its use is derived from the table, celebrated In mediaeval legend, around which King Arthur and his knights were supposed to have sat, and which was made round so that there might be no preeminence or rivalry, since none could he said to be at the head of the-table. The body of knights of the order of the Round Table took its name from this. Nowadays it is applied much more loosely to denote a number of persons seated round a circular table —as in a “round-table conference” —though it is being applied frequently to gatherings where there is a recognised chairman and where the table is not round. But it is usually used to indicate that the meeting is held in order to encourage the exchange of individual views without pre-eminence being given to any particular one. Lads in Italian 'Army.

The news that prisoners captured by the Abysslnians were mere lads of the 1011-12 class recalls the youth, of many of the patriots who served under Garibaldi in the campaigns of the Italian Risorgimento. A large proportion of the Thousand who sailed with him to conquer -Sicily were students from the universtiies, not yet engaged in earning their own livelihood; at the defence of Rome before this youngsters still in their ’teens fought side by side with “veterans” who were under 25; and when the Garibaldian war office was enlisting volunteers to supplement the army in Sicily hundreds of letters poured in from aspirants for service who gayo their age as 17—apparently as the ideal age for a soldier. There were youngsters in the Great War and there have been youngsters serving in other wars, but there has never been a war with so many youths as there were in Garibaldi’s armies.

Ethiopians Heartened. A fighting spirit bordering on hysteria has been produced among the Ethiopians as a result of the abnormal rains, priestly exhortations and prophecies and of the eclipse of the moon. This mental attitude illustrates the fact that, whereas Abyssinia is officially a Christian country, there is still a great layer of pagan superstition beneath the Christian veneer; it may be explained by the suddenness with which a form of Christianity was imposed upon what was a seething mass of African heathendom, already in early times affected by primitive Semitic ideas. While the various ethnical elements have been merged in the composite Abyssinian nation, the primitive and more advanced religious ideas have nowhere been fused in a uniform Christian system. There is still a strange mixture of savagery and lofty notions to be found among the Ethiopians; superstition, as the effect of the eclipse so clearly shows, is still an essential part of their life. Peter’s Pence.

Mussolini is reported to have approached the Vatican with a proposal to take over the Papal “frozen credits” in Germany, consisting largely of “Peter’s Pence.” Possessing the alternative, but generally disused, names of Rome Scot or Rom-Feoh, Peter’s Pence was once a tax of a penny on every hearth, and was paid annually to the Popes. Now, however, it is represented by a voluntary contribution made by the devout in Roman Catholic churches. Its date of origin is doubtful. Apparently the first written evidence of it is contained in a letter sent from Rome to the English, clergy in 1031. At this time it appears to have been levied on all families possessed' of land worth 30 pence yearly rental, out of which they paid one penny. Matthew Paris says the tax was instituted by Offa, who was King of Mercia from 757 to 706, for the upkeep of the English school and hostel at Rome. Ina, King of Wessex from 688 to 725, is credited by Layamon with originating ’ the levy. At the Norman Conquest it appears to have fallen into arrears for a time, for in 1076 William the Conqueror promised the Pope that it would be paid regularly. Pope Adrian IV extended the tax to Ireland. Then, in 1306, the tax was fixed by Clement V at a penny on each household. The threat of withholding it proved more than once a useful weapon against recalcitrant Popes in the hands of English Kings. In 1366, for instance, and for some years after, it was refused as a result of the Pope’s obstinacy in withholding his consent to the statute of praemunire. It was in the tenth century that the 'custom of Peter's Pence was introduced into Poland, Prussia and Scandinavia, and in the eleventh century Gregory VII attempted to exact it from France and Spain. The tax was finally abolished in England by Henry VIII, but it is only recently that Germany has fallen into very big arrears.