People We Hear About

New Zealand Tablet, 5 August 1915, Page 41

People We Hear About

i • , Th Most Rev. Dr. Spence, 0.P., Coadjutor-Arch-bishop of Adelaide, who has succeeded t$ the See, owing to the death of his Grace Archbishop O’Reily, is the third Archbishop of Adelaide and . the sixth occupant of the See. The new Archbishop was born in Cork 00 years ago, and became a professed member of the Dominican Order in Tallaght, County Dublin, in 1878 lie was the first Superior of the first Irish Dominican foundation in Australia, and worthily filled that office from 1898 until his appointment as Coadjutorbishop. He was consecrated in the Cathedral, Adelaide on Sunday August 16, 1914, by his Grace Archbishop Clune of Perth. 1 Sir Percy Girouard, R.E., K.C.M.G., D. 5.0., who has been appointed Controller of the new Munitions Department, and of whose ability Mr. Lloyd George spoke so highly in his address at Manchester, sayinohe was depending largely on it and Sir Percy’s know" ledge as one of the most distinguished and resourceful administrators in the British Empire to help him through the very onerous duties of his office, is a Catholic and the son of an eminent Canadian jud"e and an Irish mother. Gazetted at the age of twenty to a commission in the Royal Engineers, he has since had a remarkably successful career. Tie was railway traffic manager at Woolwich Arsenal, Director of * Railways during the Dongola and Khartoum expeditions, Director of the Egyptian Railway Board, and Commissioner and Commander-in-Chief of the Protectorate of Northern Nigeria. The Pall all Gazette, says now that the British Ambassador to Paris has been made a peer, he can join his brother, the Earl of Abingdon, in the House of Lords, where they will take the places of the late Lord Aidilaun and his surviving brother. Lord Iveagh, and thus iestore to four the number of cases in which brothers are simultaneously members of the Upper Chamber. Jhe other ‘ pairs ’ are Lord Lansdowne and Lord Fitzmaurice, Viscount Hardinge and Lord Hardinge of Penshurst, and Lord Northcliffe and Lord Rotherrnere. The new peer is, of course, a member of a well-known Catholic family, and when he takes his seat at Westminster there will be 33 members of that Church in the Chamber. There are a dozen other peerages held by Catholics, four of which are now enjoyed by ladies in their own right, and eight are on the Scottish or Irish Rolls. It is of interest just now (writes a Rome correspondent) to glance at the career of the man into whose hands Italy has given the leadership of her forces. As Commander-in-Chief of the Italian Army, General Cadorna has the unbounded confidence of the nation. He is an ardent Catholic, comes of an old military family, his father accompanied the expedition sent to the Crimea, and lias been a soldier since his boyhood. Tne General is an author of note. Even after fifteen years his work on military tactics for the use of infantry is one of the standard books on this subject. At the age of 15 he entered the Military Academy of Turin, and he continued his military education later on in other institutions. In 1875, when only twentyfive years of age, he had reached the rank of captain, and was already known as something of an authority on strategy, and as a cool and clever leader. Despite his sixty-four years the Commander-in-Chief is a tireless pedestrian, and an able horseman, and enjoys magnificent health. Of his four children — three daughters and a son—-two are nuns in Florence ; the third is known as a writer of merit ; and the fourth is an officer in the Italian Army at the front with his father. It may be added that the Second-in-Command, General Porro, is as practical and as earnest a Catholic as is his chief.