People We Hear About

New Zealand Tablet, 12 August 1915, Page 41

People We Hear About

Mr. Benjamin Hoar©, the well-known Catholic journalist of Melbourne, - celebrated his 73rd birthday on .July 21. He began on the bottom rung of newspaper work, and retired last year from the editorial staff of the Age. A writer in Munsey's Magazine has this to say in regard to South Africa's great soldier and statesman, Botha, who, notwithstanding his achievement as statesman and soldier, finds his truest happiness in the domestic circle. He is a firm friend, a courteous host, a loving husband, and a fond father. His daughter, Miss Helen Botha, is a remarkably beautiful and accomplished woman, and was educated in a" Belgian convent. Two of his sons have donned uniform and undergone service in the recent campaign ; and a third is at school. Mrs. Botha, the general's wife, is of Irish origin, and is descended from that patriotically-distinguished family that gave the martyred Robert Emmet as a sacrifice to Ireland's struggle for liberty and nationhood. The latest peer to turn his attention to wounded soldiers is the Karl of Leicester, Lord Lieutenant of Norfolk, who himself is a soldier, having been colonel in the Scots Guards, and having served in Egypt and through the Boer War with distinction. He has not only provided a convalescent home for wounded officers on his fine estate at Ilolkham, where, by the way, the King has often shot, but he has promised a monthly subscription for the upkeep of it. It was an ancestor of Lord Leicester who was responsible for the hat that millions of men wear every day. In the old days they used to shoot in tall hats, and Lord William Coke — Coke is the family name of the Leicesters—found his highly inconvenient when crawling through gaps in hedges. And so he invented a tall -hat with a carefully rounded top, which was dubbed the ' Billy Coke,' which eventually became the ' Billycock.' The Duke of Norfolk, who underwent a serious operation last week, is the premier Duke and Earl Marshal of England. He succeeded to the title in 1860, when only thirteen years of age, and has now borne it for a longer period than has fallen to the lot of any other English Duke. He received his Knighthood of the Garter in 1886 from Queen Victoria, and the Order of Christ from Leo XIII. He has been president of the Catholic Union of Great. Britain since its foundation in 1871, and is chairman of the Catholic Education Council and of the Catholic Record Society. Notwithstanding the many calls upon his time he still finds the opportunity of taking part in meetings of Catholic associations. Only the other day he presided at the annual meeting of the Catholic Young Men's Society of Great Britain, when, in the course of his inaugural address, he said it would be difficult to conceive what would be the state of the world at the conclusion of the war, but at all events it would be full of opportunities for" those who took a deep and earnest interest in the really important things of life. Great dangers must accompany that time. In the first place, there would inevitably be that feeling of reaction which would make men, wearied and worn with anxiety and toil and stress, inclined to throw aside all serious thought and seek comfort and relief in unbridled license and frivolity and a return to various forms of luxury. It was such .tendencies that would give the Catholic Church, and in particular its young men's societies, their opportunity. There were already signs that men were seeking such guidance and light, and he was sure that those responsible for the Catholic Young Men's Societies would not fail when the call came to them to guide men's minds to that Church which was the source of comfort, truth, and light. By the very fact of belonging to that society they would understand what it meant that in the darkness of doubt there was the one beacon light to guide them, the one authority to say what ought to be done and what had to be kept from, the one hope and glad resource for the shattered and broken nations as they emerged from this great struggle.