HAIG, COOL LEADER.

Wanganui Herald, Volume L, Issue 15026, 25 September 1916, Page 5

HAIG, COOL LEADER.

FATI£NC£ PERSONIFIED. CONFIDENT OF VICTORY. The following interesting description of the British Commander-In-Chief appeared In a recent issue of the New York Times;—No military leader is more averse to publicity or works more silently than Sir Douglas Haig, the British Comman-der-in-Chlef in France. To those who are importunate for the offensive his answer is “Patience and yet again patience,” while the new munition factories begin to produce and he continues his building. His generals say that he never tells them his plans, only what they are to do. Probably not one man out of ten of the million or more under his command would recognise him if they saw him. Not given to reviews or any kind of display, this quiet Scotsman was the choice of the progressive and driving element of the army as the one fit by equipment, training, and experience to succeed Sir John French. At 55 he is nine years younger than Sir John and ten years younger than Joffre or von Hindenburg. Tere is a story that he entered the army as the result of a boyish wager. He went through Oxford with distinction before he went to the military school at Sandhurst. His choice of arm was the cavalry, which has had little to do ho far in this war. But no sooner had he received his commission, later in life than most officers because of the time he had spent at Oxford, than he set out, with the THOROUGHNESS OF THE STUDENT, to master every branch of his profession. "It was in Berlin in the nineties that I met a Captain Haig, who was studying German and the German army,” said an Englishman. “I was struck by his industry—not a brilliant man, perhaps, but a sound and well balanced one. A little hesitant of speech, what he did say went to the heart of things.” He studied the French army, too, and the history of all campaigns with the systematic thoroughness that he applied. to everything. It was the same with bis pastimes as Jils profession. Whether he had talent for it or not. he made himself a first-class golf player, though the form he showed did not excite the enemy of professionals. At the Army Staff College, where officers learn organisation, he was a marked man before he acted as Chief of Staff to French in South Africa in the operations that made French's reputation. He was A SOLDIER’S SOLDIER, who had won professional esteem, although the public had hardly heard of this undemonstrative worker. Of the men of command rank in the British army in August, 1914, he and Sir William Robertson —another studious man who had risen from the ranks and is now Chief of Staff in London—were the two who were appraised by the generation of officers who had developed since South Africa as having prepared themselves for the direction of large bodies of troops on the scale of Continental warfare. They were not of the magnetic, dashing leader type, but organisers. Going out in command of the First Andy of the British Expeditionary Force, Sir Douglas had 17 months’ experience —Mqns, Ypres, and Loos of the warfare of the western front, which all agree is the toughest school any soldier has ever known. There was no doubt who commanded the first army. IT WAS HAIG. When anyone asked at the front who was the best man to take Sir John’a place the answer was almost invariably “Haig.” He had not captured the army’s imagination, but its reason. The tribute was one m brains. The new army was arriving in great numbers from the English drill grounds when he took over command. His country expects him to make it an instrument which will carry out a successful offensive on the western front, where the four months’effort of the Germans at Verdun, the French effort in Champagne, and the . British effort at Keuve Chapelle and Loos convince many military critics that the feat is impossible. His first operation, car- ' ried out without a hitch and unknown to the Germans, was the taking over of the trenches in the Arras sector occupied by French troops released for Verdun. This gave the British an intact front of about 100 miles, and was decided upon by the Allied commanders as wiser than a premature British offensive in the lore and bog of the flat country of Flanders and Northern France. HIS SIMPLE HEADQUARTERS. -A wisp of a flag and two sentries designate the entrance to the chateau, smaller than that occupied by many division generals, which is the head quarters of the Commander in Chief. Any one who expectes to be ushered into offices and aids tunning in and but of doors and telephone bells ringing will be disappointed. No place could be further removed from the struggle of the trenches and yet in the army rone. Tho only occupants of the chateau besides Sir Douglas are bis private secretary and his aids, who are “crocks,” the army word for officers who have been wounded and are not fit for exposure in the trenches. In other words, if a youngster wishes to become kn aid be must have fought and then have the decision of a doctor that he cannot stand living in a cellar-like "dug-out." The hour of any appointment is exact to the minute, and whoever has one at his chateau is expected to be there on the minute, General Headquarters time. There is little ceremony. Life at the small chateau has a soldierly simplicity. At luncheon the soldier servant places the food on the sideboard, and everyone takes his plate and helps himself. FEW QUESTS COME Sir Douglas keeps bis time to himself for ms work and his own choice of recreation. One of the aids receives' tho caller; and a minute later the man with iron gray hair and moustache, sturdy, athletic of build, slightly above medium height, who comes into the hall

could not be mistaken, whether in ov out of uniform, for anything but a soldier, though something about the well chiseled and regular features also suggests the scholar. “Oxford, and flaadnurst, and India,” said me of his adminers, “and hard work at a desk who* he was not taking exercise la Ike apM air best descibe him.” In »no> of Use rooms of the ground door the walla aro bung with maps, including a series ■ which have been crowded on a roller, Anv portion of the front in all its details may be referred to in a momestt ' ' In the centre of the room is a dsafc, ; ' and against the wall a table with mere , maps and drawings and some of them strange photographs from aeroplaaee of - grayish lines of trench systems in a 1 dusky field of shell and mine craters, . which make ons think of the died world : of the moon. Ont of doors is a field 4 of daisies and birds singing—a typical - ’ sunny day in Northern France. From this retreat A VAST ARMY IS BEING TRAINED. 4 and its organisation completed and direr ted in tee day by day tug-of-war, for 5 , "The Chief” commands an army still in the making. The staff always refdr* - to him as “The Chief.” There ia some- . i thing imperaonal about it and yet per- A’ sonal, for he is absolutely the Chief. * a There is no suggestion of any commie- <;| sion system in the command of the Rsi-A I tisn Army these days. The man and his - method are as quiet as the room. With ? a battle front which remains ia the '■*« place mouth after month, the of his work has become almost as eel as his habitation, and not unlike that | of the autocrat of some gnat business, * 1 organisation. The regular staff officers are in a town not far away. Subordia- - u ate chiefs of the different armya J branches, be it Operations, Intelligence. % Ordnance, or Supply, come to him in i succession at hours set during the moreing to make report* and receive in sir no-' tions. They do most of the talking, ' and they have learned how not to dol more than necessary. He listens and decides. If a longer conference then ; usual is desired, it may come at lunch- _ eon or later in the afternoon, when he returns from his ride, which be take* regularly every day. Then more work 1 until dinner, and then some after din-,; | ncr. If he goes down to the lines, or ’j perhaps to confer with General Joffre." . * in the car which alone of all cars carry-5V ~ ing staff officers and General along tee 1 roads flies the British flag, the routine * for that day is broken. , i PERSONAL TRAITS OP LEADER. | 1 Like General Joffre, he sleep* loaf: '■ hours. A rested mind ie a clear mine ,s for great responsibilities, like near Hindenburg, be never reads I When reading has not to do with hie pro fees ion, it ie of serious books and ’H monthlies and quarterlies. Brea doring the battle of Ypres, when it was touch and go with disaster, he slept ae fH soundly as Joffre during the battle el * the Marne. At a crisis of tbs retreat ■ -ii from Hone he remarked, as quietly efi .1 if he were giving direction to an aid* i “We shall have to hold on here ler a t|| while, if we all die for it." AfOfate | during tho retreat, when a esmafffi >1 General became somewhat demoralised; >1 Sir Douglas took him by the arm and walked up and down with him in eiieaca % till he was over hi* fit of asm* ea thsi m terrible August day. Those who worfc |jj with him know 'that his sign of anger .4 is a prolonged silence of a telling kind. Be has a temper, but does not lei it ge| 4 pact his lips, they say. Be has, too, fl keen sense of humour, with a fleets!) < flavour. The impression be leaves o* I a caller is teat of a leader without U» J lusions; a soldier who see* with a sols | dier’e logic, who is not afraid to hi M patient. “In your civil war,” he said l| to a correspondent, “it was a case at I raising armies of untrained men to fight ~ armies of untrained men, while with sst the small nucleus of regular officer* whm i survived the retreat had to train eve# i larger forces to meet a military machine which had had forty years of preparas ,i tion. Not only man to man, but i# »i organisation must we | . MAXE OURSBLVEfI SUPERIOR TO I j OUR POWERFUL ENEMY. I , The training of battalion* and th#' f ! manufacturing of guns in England anff ’1 their transfer to Franoe represented; ’ only the first stage of real preparation i for our task. Here they moat be orf J ganised into divisions, corps, end armieff under the actual conditions of warfarff ■ I before they could become worthily effect cl tive as a whole in any decisive effort' i against a foe whose staff training, ret inforced by experience in the field, muff remain excellent, however exhausted M ■ becomes. Every day he grows weak*#' V and we grow stronger. Owing to tkf '4 indomitable spirit, of our officers SMk i men in learning we are accomplilhii|# what seemed the impossible to Beam soldiers at the outset of the war. Om cause gives us strength, for w* are ,1J FIGHTING FOR CIVILISATION. ,1 \ Those who have looked to ns for vkjs 1 tory will have their patience rewarded!* A A lieutenant in the trenches knows •*#/' much of when tee blow will be etruiK as a corps commander or a staff dtps# ' ment head. A quiet order from tell quiet room and then will come t|ffi struggle, which by the token of ffffi \ commander’s strong chin and imp*#. : turbability, he will carry through wilffi . unbending resolution and Scotch “cadi nine's.” Being a good Scot, he gfffijf’ ' every Sunday morning to a litffiKw w;olcn Presbyterian chapel which ha been erected on the outskirts of ta j headquarters of the town. There Ip sits in the company of Scottish offioep and soldiers during a good Scotch e*p « mon and a long one, too. , ; , ■ ■ m -