In the Public Eye

Evening Post, Volume CXXVI, Issue 80, 1 October 1938, Page 24

In the Public Eye

General Gamelin, who visited Britain this week to confer with the British Government and with the Chief of the Imperial General Staff, Lord Gort, is the French Commander-in-Chief. He was appointed to that post only last January, receiving an office unprecedented in France—supreme command of the Army, Navy, and Air Force. Formerly he was Chief iof the General Staff of the Army.

General Marie Gustave Gamelin was born in 1872 and educated Vat St. Cyr. He was chief-of-staff to General Joffre in 1914-16, and general of brigade in 1917. In 1919 he headed a military mission sent to Brazil, and in 1927 he was promoted divisional commander. From 1925 to 1927 he commanded the French Forces in the Levant, and later was made a member of the Higher Council of War. He was Chief of the General Staff in 1931, and in 1935 became Vice-President of the Council of War.

At the time of his appointment the military correspondent of the "Daily Telegraph" stated that General Gamelin's appointment was extremely significant and to be attributed to the gravity of the world situation and the need for assuring unity of command without waiting for war to break out.

French politicians have always feared to give too much power to a soldier, he added. Only a sense of great emergency could induce the French Government to nominate General Gamelin for this post. He is France's most distinguished soldier, much trusted by the army. Mr. Alfred Noyes. Cardinal Hinsley, Archbishop of Westminster recently expressed regret, in a letter to "The Times," over the amount of premature publicity given to condemnation by the Vatican's Congregation of the Holy Office of Alfred Noyes's biography of Voltaire. Through Cardinal Hinsley, Noyes was advised that the condemnation of his book might be made formal unless he withdrew all copies from circulation and wrote something equivalent |to reparation. j The Congregation of the Holy Office also asked that the publisher, a Catholic, be severely warned and requested to do his share in withdrawing the book from circulation. Mr. Noyes defended his work, reasserting his complete adherence to the Catholic faith. to the Havas News Agency, he stressed: that his aim in writing the biography was to show that even unbelievers like Voltaire expressed opinions which refute the arguments of atheists. Mr. Noyes protested vigorously against the request that he should I write something in reparation, declaring that it was the first time a writer |of some prominence, considering his 1 conscience his own, had received such |an order in such terms. I Father Paul Schulte. ! In an aeroplane dash of more than 1200 miles into the Arctic on a resicue mission, I landed at Chesterfield i Inlet with my mechanic. Brother Beaudoin, only to find that Dr, Melling, in charge of the hospital, was •critically ill, radioed Father Paul Schulte to the* "New York Times" rejcently. , i I had planned to pick up Dr. Melling and proceed to a lonely mission on [the northern coast of Baffin Land, 500 ! miles north of the Arctic Circle, where Father Cochard was reported near ! death. Despite Dr. Melling's illness (however, I am taking off in the hope of reaching Father Cochard in time to ferry him back here to the hospital. Our mission is the result of a radio gram received by Bishop Clabaut at Churchill, on Hudson Bay, which read: "Father Cochard since nine days very sick; temperature 105; pains on left side. Father refusing food. Please help." Father Cochard's station is 1200 miles north of Churchill and 800 miles from Chesterfield Inlet.

The.danger of disease striking missionaries in lonely outposts remote from the medical facilities of civilisation, as in the case of Father Cochard, led Father Schulte, the flying padre, to found some years ago the Missionary International Vehicular Association, which seeks to keep missionaries in touch with the world through aeroplanes, automobiles, and motor-boats. Father Schulte, a German aviator during the World War, during his student days had promised Father Otto Fuhrmann, a veteran missionary, that he would take up the latter's work in Africa. In 1925 Father Fuhrmann died in Ovamboland, Africa, alone in a company of pagans without a priest. Realising that with an aeroplane Father Fuhrmann could have been transported to a modernly equipped hospital within two and a half hours, Father Schulte decided to introduce the aeroplane into missionary work.

Since then Catholic . missionaries, scattered in African jungles and Arctic wastes, have become well acquainted with Father Schulte, a blond giant, who wears clerical garb when flying.

Recently he has been laying the groundwork for an aerial mission transportation service in Canada's Arctic,' in the sparsely settled country that ■ stretches eastward, from the Mackenzie River to Chesterfield Inlet. Last year he radio-piloted the mission supply ship Ste. - Therese through Frozen Strait to the Oblate Mission stations among the Eskimos.

In 1936 Father Schulte celebrated the first aerial Mass on the ill-fated Zeppelin Hindenburg during one of its trips to Lakewood, New Jersey, after receiving Papal authorisation for this service. In 1932 Pope Pius XI gave a private audience to Father Schulte and expressed enthusiasm for the M.I.V.A. idea, "Unto Christ by land, by sea, by air." Previously Father Schulte had established, a transportation system for the Catholic missions in Africa in accordance with his promise to Father Fuhrmann.

A message three days later said that. Father Schulte. the flying priest of the Arctic, had returned to Chesterfield carrying in his plane the stricken missionary . Father Cochard. Father Schulte • completed the 800-mile flight fr'ojn Arctic Bay in North Baffin IsIjttfd, _ -- -

Mr. C. R. Attlee, Leader of the| Labour Party, who is likely to be Mr. Neville Chamberlain's chief adver- j sary when the Czech question comes before the House of Commons, has had an interesting career. He was born in 1883, and was educated at Haileybury College and University College, Oxford, where he took his M.A. He received second-class honours in Modern History and was called to the Bar of the Inner Temple in 190f>. At the age of 23 he was a declared Imperialist and Tariff Reformer, fcut he soon afterwards joined the Fabian Society, and worked with Mr. and Mrs. Sidney Webb in the poor law campaign. He became secretary of Toynbee Hall, a; tutor in Ruskin's College, and a lee- j turer in social science at the London School of Economics. On the outbreak of the war he joined the Inns of Court 0.T.C., and he subsequently saw service at Gallipoli, commanded a covering party at Suvla, was severely wounded at the attempted relief of Kut, and fought again in France, spending Armistice Day in hospital. After the war he was Mayor of Stepney, a poor law guardan, and a member of , the Metropolitan Asylums Board. He entered Parliament as member for Stepney in November, 1922, and acted as private secretary to Mr. Ramsay Mac Donald. He was UnderSecretary for War in the first Labour Government and was appointed to the Indian Statutory Commission of 1927. He was also Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster in 1930-31. Count Pecci-Blunt. An attack by an Italian anti-Semitic weekly on Count Pecci-Blunt, an American citizen well- known in Italy for his hospitality, has caused a sensation in Italian society. The Count, whose title is a Papal one, married a great-niece of Pope Leo XIII. The weekly paper, the "Giornalissimo," states that he is a German Jew in disguise and has twice changed his name and nationality. It also describes him as an adventurer. This attack was made soon after the Count had sent out 1000 invitations for a dance to be held at Malia, his Tuscan villa. This is one of the show places of Italy and belonged at one time to Marianne Elisa Bacciochi, sister of Napoleon. The Count engaged a band from Paris and made other arrangements on a grand scale. On the invitation cards j married women were asked to wear Ired and unmarried white. There was an eager response to his invitations, and many people who had not been invited strove to get cards. Cabinet Ministers and other highly-placed people were among those who accepted. When the "Giornalissinio's" attack was published, however, many people wrote and excused- themselves, saying that circumstances had arisen which forced them to cancel their acceptance of the invitation. The Count waited until he had received 200 or 300 of these notes and then sent out another 1000 cards, this time notices to say that the ball had been cancelled. Many society women have been trying to get rid of their new red or white evening frocks, which are ioo unpleasant a reminder of this awkward incident. Herr K. Henlein. Of the Sudeten Germans a trio stand out: Konrad Henlein, Sudeten German Party Leader; Herr Ernst Kundt, an energetic henchman; and Herr Wenceslaus Jaksch, leader of the German Social Democratic Party, says a writer in the "Daily Mail." Henlein's campaigning days appear over. Bargaining and negotiating with the Government are left to his colleagues. He is the figurehead of the party, and already about him is being cultivated some degree of that mystic aura which surrounds Herr Hitler himself.' Henlein remains, however, the supreme voice of the party.

It was his idea that by organising all the German gymnastic clubs in the Sudeten area into one compact body he would have a nucleus of young men which could later be converted into a powerful political force. He was largely correct. When the old German Nationalist Party was disbanded in 1929 Henlein was ready to step into the breach.

He is a man of modest habits. He collects old pewter from the antique shops of Prague, and at Asch you-can still see him strolling down to the local gymnasium, clad "in trunks and a singlet, to take his turn over the vaulting horse.

A contrast is Herr Ernst Kundt, live wire of the party, subtle debater, a man who delights in verbal battles with the Government. Son of a poor washerwoman at Boehisch-Leipa, and born in 1897, Kundt was already supporting himself, his mother, and an odd relative or two by the time war broke out. After the war he earned enough by tutoring and newspaper articles to pay his fees at the universities of Marburg and Prague, and later accepted a post as clerk in the Labour Office at his home town.

One of Herr Henlein's first advisers, one of the party's original members of Parliament, and now chairman of the Sudeten Parliamentary Club, Kundt's services have been invaluable.

Also of lowly birth is Wenceslaus Jaksch, 41-years-old leader of the German Social Democrats, a skeleton party, on which, however, the hopes of the Czechs of co-operating with the Sudetens depends. Jaksch is one of many children born to a poor workman in a cottage in the Bohemian Forest. While his schoolfellows were playing cowboys and Indians, he sat at home with his books.

He devoted his life to politics, and his rise in his party has been rapid. He would never be taken for a leader of men; his chief strength Ties in the devastating irony. .of hi? oratory _