"DIGGER" BRAND.

Auckland Star, Volume LXIII, Issue 302, 21 December 1932, Page 15

"DIGGER" BRAND.

POPULAR GENERAL RETIRES. "JAMMED IN THE EAILS. , * Responding to a tumultuous welcome at a luncheon tendered him in the United Services' Institute in Melbourne by 400 officers of the staff corps and representatives of the Navy and Air Force, Brigadier - General ("Digger") Brand, the most popular living , leader of tho A.1.F., who has juet retired from the office of Quarter-Master General in Australia, declared that if he had. to eelect a life's career again he would choose that of a regular soldier. "No other profession," he 6aid, "affords euch opportunities for developing latent administrative or organising talent or acquiring an insight into human nature."

It wae to be hoped, he said, that conditions would improve eo that there would not be such an inclination for the hest men to leave the service of the Navy, Army, and Air Force and go into commerce. Australia niuet have a fully trained complement of staff officers.

"My retirement from active soldiering mcane a slackening of the bonds that bound us together in a common cauee," eaid Brigadier-General Brandj "and I would be a queer individual if I did not feel the wrench. To-day, however, I refuse to be downhearted. Why should I be? After 44 years' service for the Crown, 32 of which have been epent in the Army, I have entered a life of ease ahd reflection, with my head well up. I believe I have given faithful and honest service, and I can look back and say that I never knowingly did any man an injustice. (Cheers.) "I have made friendships which will end with the grave. I have had a good run except in the last half furlong, when I got jammed on the rails by a horse called Economy out of Depression." (Laughter.)