SIR DOUGLAS HAIG.

Hawera & Normanby Star, Volume LXXI, Issue LXXI, 23 February 1916, Page 3

SIR DOUGLAS HAIG.

THE KIND OF MAN HE IS. It is told that when Kitchener was .moving up the Nile on his avenging march to Khartoum in 1898 a young cavalry captain, was told oh: with a handful of men to hunt down a body of twenty Arabs, who had first sworn . fealty to the Sirdar, and then treach- '■■ erously murdered several Egyptian sol- j diers and fled. The young soldier pur-! sued them for many weary miles, and I then, driving them to bay, killed or i captured nineteen of them. But one ■ made oft*. The little band of pursuers ! were so weary that they could hardly; keep their saddles, and the night was ! falling fast. But their leader was ob-j durate. They must go on.—and go on ' at once. ''But we may have to chase j the Arab for miles, and, after all, he's l •only one," was objected. The leader, *et his .jaw. "If I have to follow him 1 for a hundred miles I .will have him," he eaid. "I was ordered to account for twenty fugitives, not nineteen; and I must have twenty." So they rode on oy#r the trackless desert, under the. veil of night, guided only by the stars, ( and at dawn they found their twentieth | ; man. That story mentions the name of ! Captain Douglas Haig as its hero; and, J whether it be strictly historical or not,' it ls true in the main and most import- j ant detail, that it sums up Haig's char- ' acter. It sounds like him; it more I than suggests what he would have done' under the given circumstances. From I the beginning 'of his career, right! through to the present day, Haig has' never done anything without insisting '■ on doing it as thoroughly and complete-: ly as lies in Iris power. j Some have called him hard, and per-' haps he looks it, with his strong jaw and unwinking eyes. There is no doubt that he is one of the most resolute 1 officers in the army. Were he ordered to storm a breach with a thousand men he would rafter see every one of the thousand die than consent to fall back battled. But he would take it as a matter of course that he himself should die first, to set the example to his soldiers. He is assuredly not one of those commanders wlio leave others to look into death's face and smell the gunpowder, Tv"hile he "himself remains m the rear and reaps the glory. j