GREAT IN PEACE AND IN WAR

Evening Star, Issue 19778, 31 January 1928, Page 6

GREAT IN PEACE AND IN WAR

Press Association—By Telegraph—Copyright LONDON, January 30. (Received January 31, at 1.15 p.rn.) Sir George Milne (Chief of the Imperial General Staff'), a colleague of Lord Haig in the Great War, telegraphed to Countess Haig on behalf of the Army Council, expressing profound sympathy in the “ irreparable loss of your husband, who was loved and trusted by all the Armies of the Empire which ho led to victory.” Sir lan Hamilton cited Lord Haig’s recent inspection of the Boy Scouts, and emphasised his making friends with eager Wolf Cubs, adding: “ft was so like him. To-morrow he was going to advise the British Legion how best to help his distressed comrades. 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 his wonderful career. Lord Haig was never a man to parade his anguish, either when under his orders men were falling in thousands or afterwards. Lord Haig always held his head high, and never faltered momentarily under the burden of the world-wide responsibility that he endured for years. He preferred the people to think that he had not done anything special. Signor Mussolini, when ho recently met him, said he imagined that he was going to see a care-worn old gentleman creeping into the room. Instead, he found a vigorous young soldier. Lord Haig repeated the remark, not because it tickled his vanity, which was non-existent, but because he felt that 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. His special qualities were stability,' simplicity, intense modesty, and unfaltering generosity.”—A. and N.Z. and ‘ Sun ’ Cable.

Mr Winston Churchill said: “Lord 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 the stresses of war and render service to the State beyond the power of any other man. These classic qualities preserved a noble dignity amid the rewards and unaccustomed leisure of 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.’'