FIELD-MARSHAL SIR DOUGLAS HAIG

At home with his family at Eastcott, Surrey, England, after the war closed. Haig, in August, 1919, was made an Earl

figured a good deal in headlines. "D. Haig" was the simple way in which he signed his name. "We have all passed through many dark days," he said in an address to his troops after the successful and decisive offensive of October 8, 1918. "Please God these never will return." One of those dark days was April 12, 1918, when the British army was fighting for its life in the Ypres sector, but always indomitably. That was the occasion when Haig issued his famous "back to the wall" order, in which he also said, with a simplicity having something of the sublime in it:

"Many among us now are tired. To those I would say that victory will belong to the side which holds out the longest. The French Army is moving rapidly and in great force to our support. There is no other course open to us but to fight it out. Every position must be held to the last man. There must be no retirement."

With Sir Horace Smith-Dorrien, his fellow corps commander, Haig more than once saved the British Army during its retreat from Mons. Major Ernest W. Hamilton, historian of that retreat, has said that "one hundred Victoria Crosses were earned for every one that was given." One-third of Britain's little army of that time now sleep their long sleep in France. Smith-Dorrien, whose health broke down under the strain, and Haig, the man of iron, vied with each other in fighting rear-guard actions until flesh and blood could endure no more. The escape of remnants of certain British brigades bordered on the miraculous. "We shall have to hold on here for a while if we all die for it," said Haig on one desperate occasion. The first battle of Ypres, in 1914, was as touch-and-go a business as anything experienced in the retreat from Mons. The Seventh Division, which was 12,000 strong when it left England, lost 336 officers out of 400, and 9,664 men. On the darkest day, when all seemed lost, down the Menin road galloped Haig and his small escort of the Seventeenth Lancers, shells falling thick about them. He had gone for no other reason than to encourage his faltering troops, a general's place being behind the line. On the battle of the Somme, in 1916, which he fought with tried as well as with green troops, Haig's fame will perhaps rest most securely. No fiercer long battle was ever fought. On the Somme the enemy had to be pried out of one Gibraltar after another; driven from one Plevna after another, but the British, under Haig, moved relentlessly forward; their losses some 500,000, German losses much greater. If Haig ever showed a trace of the tremendous strain, nobody made mention of the fact.

This Scottish gentleman, son of John Haig of Ramornie, in Fifeshire, who in this war at one time commanded 2,000,000

British and Colonial troops, was in the prime of life at fiftyseven, tall, lithe, well knit, a consummate horseman, fair of complexion, blue of eye, in manner gracious, reserved, and kindly. "I have rarely seen a masculine face so handsome and yet so strong," said one who tried to interview him. He shunned publicity. He was a knight of the prized Order of the Thistle. Modest and indifferent to fame, Haig was among the great commanders whom the war brought to the front. The impression he created in an interview was unlike the traditional conception of the man of war, and yet his bearing, gallant and soldierly, conveyed an impression of a man master of himself and of his task. He was young-looking even for his years, a suggestion due, not only to rapid movements made by a stalwart frame, but more definitely to his smooth, untroubled face, which in profile slanted forward from a retreating brow to the nose and a big, strong chin. Seen in front, the face was square and massive, the mouth broad and decisive, the blue-gray eyes calm and direct. In his speech and manner there was no trace of the "rough-hewn" soldier. He suggested Oxford more than the barrack-room. One felt that he would be charming and reassuring at the bedside as a visiting rector or physician. Mingled gravity and gentleness were the note of his bearing and his conversation. One could not resist the frankness and courtesy seen in his direct but kindly glance. He won confidence by sincerity and candor, was tolerant of a contrary opinion, listened with respect to anything that deserved respect. In the midst of his staff, his mastery was obvious without being demonstrative. He had the art of the judge who encouraged counsel to enlighten him, but reserves right of judgment.

In a report on the retreat from Mons, French spoke of "the skilful manner in which Haig extricated his corps from an exceptionally difficult position in the darkness of the night," while at the Aisne "the action of the First Corps under the direction and command of Haig was of so skilful, bold, and decisive a character, that he gained positions which alone enabled me to maintain my position for more than three weeks of very severe fighting on the north bank of the river." In reporting on the first battle of Ypres, French gave the chief honors to Haig: "Throughout this trying period, aided by his divisional commanders and his brigade commanders," he "held the line with marvelous tenacity and undaunted courage." "Words fail me," added French, "to express the admiration I feel for their conduct, or my sense of the incalculable service they have rendered." When the first forward movement was attempted at Neuve Chappelle, and the First Army Corps went southward for the task, to Haig was committed the

executive command in the field. It was an ill-fated venture, despite an apparent success, but its failure was attributed mainly to an insufficiency of artillery preparation. French declared that in this engagement "the energy and vigor with which Haig handled his command showed him to be a leader of great ability and power." Haig's record revealed many of the qualities of great generalship, caution in preparing his stroke, ingenuity in extricating himself from difficulties, constancy of mind, a temperament of confidence, power of commanding the affections, as well as the obedience, of subordinates, resolution and impetus in action. There was no other personality in the British General Staff for whom possession of so many essentials of command could have been claimed. No one knew more about the hairbreadth escapes the first seven British divisions had in the retreat to the Marne, nor was any one better qualified to tell the story of the German failure to destroy the British contingents in the critical battle around Ypres in the autumn of 1914. Haig said in one of his reports that "the margin with which the German onrush of 1914 was stemmed was so narrow, and the subsequent struggle was so severe that the word 'miraculous' is hardly too strong a term to describe the recovery and ultimate victory of the Allies." In this statement he had in mind the wonderful survival of remnants of the British army and its slender reinforcements when the Kaiser made his drive for the sea after the Marne. Foch and Haig must often have talked about the German failure and wondered why the Kaiser, who went to Roulers to witness a débâcle of the Allies, could have come so close to success and then missed it. At Ypres a division under Rawlinson was reduced to about 400 officers and men. From Mons to the stand at Ypres, the British army lost one-third of its complement in killed.

No soldier of recent times had paid more attention to certain aspects of our Civil War. Haig thought the Confederate "Jeb" Stuart the supreme cavalry genius of the nineteenth century. When commanding at Aldershot he imprest the lesson of Stuart's career upon his own staff. His personality had something in common with that of "Stonewall" Jackson. Like the Confederate leader, he had a marked strain of evangelical piety, a serious style of speech and a touch of the pale student. He was somber like Jackson, rather than dashing in the fashion of Stuart. Haig made apt citations from the Scriptures. His intellect was Scotch and metaphysical, his favorite poet Burns.

Looking somewhat taller than he was, owing to the slimness of his build, Haig suggested the military hero of whom young ladies love to read. He was graceful in every movement, yet masculine

in the strength stamped upon him by a life of activity. His complexion was swarthy, tanned by African and Indian suns, yet the bluish gray in large, limpid eyes, that flashed under gray brows, betrayed his northern extraction. His hair was grizzled, like his mustache, but he had an oddly youthful appearance and features finely chiseled. The salient feature was a strong and shapely chin. A lean, brown hand clasped that chin in moments of reflection. His voice, in which few words were spoken, was low, modulated to the atmosphere of the drawing-room, yet commanding and decisive. He moved quickly, but his gestures were few. His figure was clean-cut, his cheek smooth and darkened by years of close shaving, his bearing erect and his walk straight and rapid. Haig's career was typical of younger sons in a wealthy and aristocratic British family. English and Scotch were blended in him. His early ambitions were literary and his career at Oxford was distinguished from that point of view; but a decline in the family fortunes made a definite career important. Skill as a rider indicated cavalry as his goal. For a long time he was thrown constantly with Kitchener, discussing plans of campaign in Egypt, sharing with him the hardships of the drive through the desert when he would take the liberty now and then of making suggestions, always palatable to Kitchener. The relation of the two continued delightful. The fact that Haig not only got on with so cold and distant a man as the Sirdar, but thawed him into cordiality, was cited as proof of his charm. Kitchener succumbed to it and saw that the efficient Scot was mentioned in dispatches and rewarded with promotion.

Haig did not swear, or gamble, or dance all night at revels, or affect the dress uniform of his rank. His asceticism was understood and recognized. He had the Presbyterian temperament. His quartermaster one day asked him during the Colesberg operations if, in a brush with the Boers, he had lost anything. "Yes," confest Haig solemnly, "my Bible!" Not once did his countenance relax as he gazed at the grinning faces around him. He attended Presbyterian services when they were held at the front, and in a certain passion for theology suggested Gladstone. In Berlin he profoundly imprest members of the German Staff when he studied there several years before the war. In Paris his name was a familiar one long before the war. He had followed French maneuvers in the Champagne and elsewhere in the capacity of British military attaché.

Of all the Allied commanders Haig at the end of the war was the oldest in point of service as a chief and was perhaps the youngest in years. He came to supreme command when the new