ARMY MOURNS.

Auckland Star, Volume LIX, Issue 25, 31 January 1928, Page 7

ARMY MOURNS.

HAMILTON'S SORROW

"Held His Head High And Never

Faltered." CHURCHILL ELOQUENT. (By Cable.—Press Association. —Copyright.) (Received 1.30 p.m.) LONDON, January 30. Sir George Milne, a colleague of Earl Haig in the Great War, has telegraphed to Countess Haig on behalf of the Army Council. He expressed profound sympathy in the irreparable loss of her husband. He was loved and trusted by all the armies of the Empire which he led to victory. Sir lan Hamilton cited Earl Haig's recent inspection of the Boy Scouts and emphasised his making of friends with eager Wolf Cubs, adding: "That was so like him. To morrow he was going to advise the British Legion how best to help their distressed comrades and that was so like- him. To-day his valiant heart has ceased to beat.

"Not now when the shock benumbs us can the pen be trusted to trace the footsteps of a wonderful career. Haig was never a man to parade anguish either when, under his orders, men were falling iu thousands or, afterwards.

"Haig always held his head high and never faltered momentarily. Under the burden of world-wide responsibility he endured for years. He preferred people to think he had not done anything special.

"Mussolini, when he recently met him, said he imagined he was going to see a careworn old gentleman creeping into his room. Instead he round a vigorous young soldier. Earl Haig repeated the remark not because it tickled his vanity, which was non-existent, but because he felt his appearance helped to maintain the assumption that he had been through nothing in particular but his too-human heart betrayed him in the end.

"Now it beats no more. He was typical of the best side of the Scot. His special qualities were stability, • simplicity, intense modesty and unfaltering generosity."

An official medical statement shows that Earl Haig's heart failure was due to the effects of the war and his previous tropical campaigning services on the heart muscles.

Mr. Winston Churchill said: "Earl Haig was incomparably the finest British soldier in this fateful age. His calm, unwearying strength of mind and singleness of spirit enabled him to endure all stresses of war and to render a service to the State beyond the power of any other man. These classic qualities were preserved with noble dignity amid the rewards and unaccustomed leisures of a victorious peace.

"He never spoke a word but for his comrades. His end was swift like a soldier's in the battlefield. His memory will live and grow with the grandeur of the events with which he strove and over which in the end he ruled."