LONG QUEUE

Dominion, Volume 21, Issue 111, 8 February 1928, Page 9

LONG QUEUE

OF MOURNERS PASS EARL HAIG’S BODY

CATHEDRAL OPEN UNTIL LATE HOUR

POSITION OF GRAVE IN ABBEY RUINS

Rugby, February 6.

Since Saturday morning a continuous stream of mourners has passed the body of Earl Haig in St. Giles’s Cathedral. When the doors of the Cathedral should have closed yesterday afternoon at 5 o’clock, there was a queue ol people four abreast a mile long, and it was decided to keep the Cathedral open until ID o’clock. The public will be admitted again this evening until the same late hour. To-morrow the Field-Marshal’s remains will be conveyed to Dryburgh Abbey for burial in the family grave. After a special service in the Cathedral the coffin will, be taken on a guncarriage, escorted by troops, to Waverley Station. The troops will consist ot two squadrons ot the Royal Scots Greys, the Second Battalion of the Cameron Highlanders, with its pipe baud, and an escort of the King's Own Scottish Borderers. As the special train leaves the station with the body a salute of nineteen minute guns will be fired from Edinburgh Castle. When the train arrives at the station near Dryburgh Abbey the body will be transferred to a farm cart and escorted to the Abbey by employees of the late Field-Marshal. The service at Dryburgh Abbey will be of a non-military character, but at the close pipers of the Cameron Highlanders will play the ancient Scottish dirge, “Flowers of the Forest,” and the buglers will sound “The Last Post.” Two minutes’ silence will follow, and then “The Reveille.” The Abbey was once a temple where the Druids ’ worshipped. It has long been ruined, and Earl Haig’s body will lie under green turf which is open to the sky. The position of the grave is by the broken wall of the north transept. Once a year only is service held in the Abbev, and the late FieldMarshal often read the lesson on these jecasions.—British Official Wireless.

“HE FOUGHT THE GOOD FIGHT”

NEW ZEALAND SCOTS’ TRIBUTE

Tribute to the memory of the late Earl Haig was paid by Mr. R. 11. Nimmo, Dominion Chief of the Federated Society of Scots of New Zeaalnd, in a speech broadcast from radio station 2 YA, Wellington, last night. "The people of our Motherland,” he , said, "are silently and sorrowfully paving their last tribute to a great anil gallant soldier, and one of Scotland’s noblest sons. As I speak to you, there stand around me representatives of the Maori race, and among them some who saw service under the leadership of our great national hero, whose passing to the land of the Leal we are mourning to-night. Our Maori friends have asked that their .people shall be associated with the tribute that I, as Dominion Chief of the Federated Caledonian Scots Societies of New Zealand, urn privileged on behalf of my brother Scots, to pay to the memory of another of Scotia’s illustrious sons, the late Field-Marshal Earl Haig. “Almost you can hear the muffled tread of the mourners who are following his mortal remains to their last resting place in his beloved Bemersvde. All true. Scottish eyes are misty the nee 1 Field Marshal Earl Haig, the 29th Laird of Bemersyde, moves on to immortal glorv. He has fought the good fight! Through long years he gave of his best in the service of his King and country. In the hour of the Empire’s supremest peril he stood—calm and immovable as our own towering Egmont—a pillar of strength at the head of the forces of Great Britain, and with indomitable courage and soldierly wisdom he paved for them the way to victory. For him, had he wished, was an honoured place among the Empire’s illustrious dead witbin that Abbev which is the most sacred shrine beneath the British flag. He chose instead the quietude of his own dear countryside—a resting place among his ain folk who knew and loved him best. Thither they are carrying him at the very moment. There let him sleep in the soil from whence he sprang, the while those who live after him shall acclaim him another of Scotland’s immortal sons.”