DEATH OF EARL HAIG

Hokitika Guardian, 3 February 1928, Page 3

DEATH OF EARL HAIG

(Australian it N.Z. Cable Association.) WREATHS FROM NOTABLES. LONDON', Fob. 1. The Prince of Wales, will represent the King at Karl Unix’s funeral at 'Westminster Abbey. Tbe Kino, Prince of Wales. Kino of Belgium, and hundreds of notabilities have ordered wreaths of poppies from the Legion factory. The Legionaries will line large sections of the route and will provide a guard ol honour at Waterloo. .MILITARY PR KPA RATIONS. LONDON. Feb. 2. General Retain will definitely lx l pall bearer. Fight superior officers including five Generals will carry Karl Haig’s . insignia. 7 The troops in the procession will be four battalions of the Scottish Borderers. a. battalion of the London Scottish, and also the Seventh Hussars, Seventeenth Lancers and Horseguards. A Lancer and a Hussar will lead Karl Haig’s wartime charger. Sergeant Secrett. for thirty years Karl Haig’s personal servant, precedes the charger. The gun carriage will be the same as that which bore the unknown warrior, and belongs to the gun which fired the first shell in the war.

LATE EARL’S DEVOUTNESS. LONDON, Feb. I

A new story of Earl Haig’s intense devoutness is revealed by a.St. Andrews .Professor, George Duncan, a war-time Presbyterian ebaplain. “ Tho British Headquarters of U: ■ Presbyterian Church consisted of a small wooden hut, wieli Karl llaig attended every Sunday morning,” Instates, “ but that black Sunday following the outbreak of the German offensive in -March, 1018, I realised that lie cotlld not come. 1 could scarcely believe my eyesight when lie appeared outside the hut, as calm and resolute as ever. I said I hoped tilings were not bad. Karl llaig replied: ’’ Things will never be too bad,’ adding, ‘lt is what you read in the second book of Chronicles—“ Re not afraid nor dismayed ” (chapter 20, verse 15)." ’ He then went into the church. That same evening Karl Haig did the biggest ’thing in his career. He had bad a fruitless consultation with General T’etain, which revealed that the French commanders were mostly concerned with the defence of Paris. Karl llaig returned to headquarters and wired forthwith to London, urging the appointment of a Generalissimo for the whole front. It was for him a supreme sacrifice, but it saved the Allied line.” AT THE COFFIN. (Received this day at 11.0 a.m.) LONDON, Feb. 2. Lady Haig, wearing a Flanders’ poppy, knelt for half an hour in silent devotion in mourning in front of tho coffi n. A few minutes afterwards a party of Scottish borderers took over tbe guard. .Meanwhile another queue waited outside, the carlist arrivals including crippled ex-scrvieeincn, nurses and Chelsea pensioners.

GOVERNOR-GENERAL'S TRIBUTE. CHRISTOHUR.€fF, Feb. 3. In an address to the Veterans’ Assn, the GovernorGcneral said: ‘‘l would like to pay my respects and that of our old comrades, to a very great man -jynd very great gentleman. It was my good fortune to have known Earl Haig, and it was also my good luck to have served with him in the Sudan War. Ho was then a subaltern in flic 7th. Hussars. Thcrafter we were soldiers together, and I constantly met him. 4JJO was not a man who was showy, and it was quite contrary to his nature to go in for tlieatriealism. He did his job well. He was not a man to put himself out to secure cheap popularity. Those who knew him loved him and even if one cannot say that- lie win one of the greatest figures of history, one can say that he was tremendously beloved by every man in the armies.”