People We Hear About

New Zealand Tablet, 20 January 1916, Page 47

People We Hear About

V ■ . . Our American exchanges announce, the death in Chicago of Mr. Michael A Douohoe, the founder and publisher of the .well-known Donohoe & Magazine. Mr. Donohoe was a Co. Galway man. Born at Gort in 1841, he went to America in childhood, but remained to his latest hour a faithful and fervent lover of the Old Laud. / * ; ■ 1 ' , ■* M. Denys Cochin, the well-known French Catholic leader, has been -presented with the freedom of. the city of Athens by the municipality. Pie was enthusiastically cheered by the crowds, and the town was illuminated at night in his honor. The war is smoothing down old differences among Irishmen with a completeness and celerity so amazing as to seem little short of miraculous. When Mr. Redmond was in Flanders the Colonel commanding the Irish Guards paraded the regiment for Mr. Redmond’s inspection, the Colonel being Lieut.-Col. McCalmont, C. 8., a foremost officer in the Carson Army during its gun-running exploit J ' The British Consul at Shiraz, who was lately captured by the Persian gendarmerie, turns out to be an Irishman, Major W. F. O’Connor. He has had a most exciting career in the East, having been at one time severely wounded in Tibet. Jonkheer van Nispen will, in all probability, succeed the latp.M. Regout as the Netherlands representative at the Vatican. He is a lawyer, a prominent member of the Catholic Party, a member of the Second Chamber, of which he has been president, and was spoken of as a likely nominee even prior to M. Regout’s appointment,. . , There was not a little interest attached to the wedding ceremony which took place in theflfciny Catholic church at Holly Place, Hampstead, London, when Patrick McGill (the navvy poet) was. married to a grandniece of r Cardinal Gibbons; who is a well-known writer, of children’s stories; , Rifleman McGill, as he now is, was wounded in France, and received ten days’ leave from his hospital ‘over there’ to be married. The service was performed by Father John Leathes, of the Dominican Priory, Haverstock Hill, and the rector of the church was present. It may be well to explain why Mr. McGill is known as the * navvy ’ poet. In his book, Children of the, Dead End , which created quite a furore, he tells his own life; how years ago he joined the potato-pickers •in Glenties, in Ireland, and later went to Gourock, in Scotland, where he worked as a navvy, but all the time he was educating himself, until he is to-day a novelist as well as a poet. Since he has been in the trenches he has contrived to write a good deal, and his books, The Amateur Army, The lied Horizon, and Soldier Songs; deal with life ‘somewhere.’ . . : ; r

Sir William Robertson, the new Chief of Staff of the British Army, has been «a tremendously hard worker all his life, yet it was not until after 1888, ten years after he enlisted, that he was recommended for a commission, which* he obtained in the 3rd Dragoon Guards. Even then he. might never have been more than a captain, had he not seized his great chance in 1891, when he was appointed railway transport officer for the punitive expeiTition to quell' a turbulent tribe of Path ana", who were plundering the Miranzai Valley. His fine work on this occasion, and with the Chitral Expedition/• marked him for early promotion. The D. 5.0., .a : medal and clasp, and mention in despatches, were his reward for. -Chitral; and when the 'South African" War.'. broke out he was recognised as the one man for the task of attending to the transport organisation. Tn 1910 he was appointed Commandant of the Staff College, one of the most-sought-after billets in the Army. ; Yf. YY.';- ~ ; ::Y-- : . '*■■'■' r i ■"' Y