OLD SOLDIER

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume LXXII, 8 September 1938, Page 3

OLD SOLDIER

SIR lAN HAMILTON LJiy Air Mail —Own Correspondent! LONDON, 11th August. General Sir lan Hamilton exemplifies in his own person the truth of the adage about old soldiers. He is 85, but mentally as alert and physically as active as ever, which is saying a very great deal. As a subaltern at Majuba Hill he had his right hand shattered by a Boer bullet after he had been snubbed by his superior officers for daring to suggest that our position on top of that eminence was strategically catastrophic. Later as a Mounted Infantry commander in the next Boer war, Sir lan greatly distinguished himself, a feat accomplished by remarkably few of our Brass Hats in that campaign. He went all through the Russo-Japanese War as a Military Attache, and his “Leaves from a Staff Officer’s Notebook” records his impressions in his own inimitable way. If his Gallipoli command did not achieve success, and thereby shorten the Great War by two years, that was not Sir lan’s fault. Instead of the live military wires he asked for, Sir lan was given some monumental Army “duds” as subordinates. Now, at 85, Sir lan is preaching goodwill among the nations,. and has just flown from Berlin to Munich to talk with Hitler.