EARL HAIG

Evening Star, Issue 19781, 3 February 1928, Page 7

EARL HAIG

FUNERAL ARRANGEMENTS PRINCE OF WALES TO REPRESENT THE KING Press Association—By Telegraph-Copyright. LONDON, February 1. The Prince of Wales will represent the King at Lord Haig’s funeral at Westminster Abbey. The King, the Prince of Wales, the King of Belgium, and hundreds of notabilities have ordered wreaths of poppies from the Legion factory. Legionaries will line large sections of the route, and will provide a guard of honor at Waterloo. Marshal Petain will definitely be a pall-bearer. Eight superior officers, including five generals, will carry Lord Haig’s insignia. , The troops in the procession will be: —Four battalions of Foot Guards, a battalion of Scottish Borderers, a battalion of London Scottish, the Seventh Hussars, the 17th Lancers, and the Horse Guards. A lancer and a hussar will lead Lord Haig’s wartime charger, and Sergeant Societt, for thirty years Lord Haig's personal servant, will precede the charger. The gun carriage, which is the one that bore the Unknown Warrior, belongs to the gun which fired the first shell in the war.—A. and N.Z. and,‘Sun’ Cable.

PERSONAL CHARACTERISTICS

LONDON, February 1

A new'story of Lord Haig’s intense devotion is revealed by Professor George Duncan, ol St. Andrew's, who was a wartime Presbyterian chaplain at British headquarters. The Presbyterian Church consisted of a small wooden hut, which Lord Haig attended every Sunday morning. Professor Duncan states:—“But on that black Sunday following the outbreak of the Gorman offensive in March, 1918, I realised that he could not come. I could scarcely believe my eyesight when he appeared outside the hut as calm and resolute as ever. I said 1 hoped things were not too bad, and he replied: ‘Things will never be too bad,’ adding, ‘it is what you read in Second Chronicles, “Be "not afraid nor dismayed" (chapter xx., verse 15). He then went into the church. That same evening Lord Haig did the biggest thing in his career. He had a fruitless consultation with Marshal Petain, which revealed that the French commanders were mostly concerned with the defence of Paris. Lord Haig then returned to headquarters, and wired forthwith to London, urging the appointment of a generalissimo for the whoffi front. It was for him a supreme sacrifice, but it saved the Allied line.”—A. and N.Z. and ‘ Sun ’ Cable.

HIS COMRADE

SIR CHARLES FERGUSSON’S

TRIBUTE,

(Pes United Press Association.]

CHRISTCHURCH, February 3,

In an address to the Veterans’ Association, the Governor-General said: “1 would liko to pay respects to our old comrade, a very great man and a very great gentleman. It was my good fortune to have known Earl Haig, ami it was also my good luck to Imve served with him in the Sudan War. Ho was then a subaltern in the 7th Hussars. Thereafter wo soldiered together, and 1 constantly met him. He was not a man who was showy, and it was quite contrary to his nature to go in for theatricalism. He did his job well; be was not the man to put himself out to secure cheap popularity. Those _ who knew him loved him, and even if one cannot say that he was one of the great figures of history, one can say that he was tremendously beloved by every man in the Armies.”