HAIG THE MAN

Manawatu Standard, Volume LV, Issue 39, 14 January 1935, Page 8

HAIG THE MAN

DEFENCE BY MINISTER. ! Mr Lloyd George’s attack upon the war record of Earl Haig gave point to a eulogium of the field-marshal by Rev. Dr. Archibald Fleming at the unveiling of a memorial to him in St. Andrew’s Garrison Church, Aldershot, by the Duke of York. They were not there that day to appraise the military greatness of Lord Haig, said Dr. Fleming. Posterity and the lapse of years would in due time set up their own passionless tribunal. But they might note a few of those personal qualities which spurred them on to imitate and to admire him. Jealousy was a fault of which he was incapable. When Lord Haig spoke to him at the end of the war of the vexed question of the unity of command, and gave reasons why he thought that Marshal F'ocli should be supreme, lie added, “What did it matter who got the credit, so long as the war was won?” Another signal mark of his magnanimity was his considerateness, almost to a fault, for those who served under him. His almost impertura.bable serenity was not a phlegmatic .serenity. It was that calm to which a man attained who had been a lifelong disciplinarian of himself. Haig's mind rarely worked in lightning flashes. He had his great intuitions; but it was with a slow inevitableness that he reached decisions; never one of them was taken impulsively; never one of them was reached, whatever the agitations that surrounded him, except in a mental atmosphere that was absolutely calm. Another of his great qualities was his unique unselfishness, and un-self-consciousness. When the war was over, and when all the world anticipated the signal honour ultimately bestowed on him by the King, it was Lord Haig’s humble wish that no distinction should he conferred on himself until the Government had made at least some decent provision for the future of the rank and file the comrades who had served with him in the war. That was his characteristic all through life ; and until the very day of his death his constant and all-engrossing thought was for his men. He put the glamour of his fame, and the influence derived from his achievements, in harness to one steady purpose—the purpose that not a man or woman or child who suffered in mind or body or estate by reason of the conflict should be neglected or forgotten. Dr. Fleming said lie bad known most of the soldiers who held high command in the war, and he had been impressed by tlie obvious sense, in almost all of them, of a God-directed destiny, and of the need for constant dependence on God. One and all of those eminent soldiers, so far as he knew them, hated war.