HAIG'S BIOGRAPHER.

Auckland Star, Volume LXV, Issue 29, 3 February 1934, Page 9

HAIG'S BIOGRAPHER.

Conflicts Between Soldiers and

Politicians

LLOYD GEORGE CRITICISED

LONDON", February 2

Mr. A. Duff Cooper, M.P. (COll., Westminster), Financial Secretary to the War Office, the late Earl Ilaig's biographer, urges a cessation of soldiers' and politicians' mutual distrust. He declares that immediately a politician loses faith in a soldier he must resign or dismiss the soldier.

Continuing, Mr. Cooper says: "Mr. Lloyd George's mistake was in distrusting Lord Haig and lacking the courage to dismiss him while he was doing his utmost to undermine him among his fellow countrymen and the Allies. That was unpardonable, and because of it the name 'politician' stank in the nostrils of the Army.

"Nevertheless soldiers should acquire the politician's 'gift of the gab.' Politicians have always won though they have not always been right.

"The German soldiers were wrong over ICurse Cavell, who was justly executed according to the rules of warfare, but any politician could have told them that to execute one woman would arm 100,000 men against Germany. We should all be soldiers' politicians."