adjutant-general.

But it was with the

close of the South African War that his pace of advancement became noticeable. He went to the War Office as director of military training, was then appointed. chief of the general staff in India, and in 1911, while still well under fifty, was brought home to fill the coveted Aldershot command. There was an undercurrent of complaint in the service at this rapid progress. "It is questionable," said one critic, "whether the plan of switching officers about from one important appointment to another long before their allotted time in posts has expired is advantageous to the military machine." There were not wanting suggestions that court influences were at work in his favor, suggestions which had their root in the fact that he had married the Hon. Dorothy Vivian, who had been maid of honor to Queen Alexandra. No one with any knowledge of English public life will suppose that the fact was a hindrance to Sir Douglas.

But personal contact with him and a study of his career will at least disabuse the mind of the idea that his progress has been a matter of mere social fortune. The impression he creates is singularly unlike the traditional conception of the man of war. I have seen him described as a rough-hewn soldier," who, like Kléber, makes you feel brave to look at him. If you meet him with that picture in your mind you have a shock of surprise. It is true that his bearing is gallant and soldierly, and that he conveys the sense of a man entirely master of himself and of his task. He is one of the youngest generals in the British army, but he is young-looking even for his years. This suggestion of youth is due not only to the rapid movements of the stalwart frame, but more definitely to the smooth, untroubled face. In profile it slants forward from the retreating brow to the adventurous nose and the big, strong chin. Seen in front, the face is square and massive, the mouth broad and decisive, the blue-gray eyes are calm and direct. But in his manner, speech, and habit of mind there is no

trace of the "rough-hewn soldier." He is as remote as anything that can be imagined from suggesting the hard, merciless features of the typical Prussian, Mackensen or Falkenhayn, for example. Despite his uniform, he suggests Oxford more than the barrack-room, and one feels that he would be charming and reassuring by the bedside whether as the rector or the doctor. He irradiates a certain atmosphere of what I may call benevolent alertness. His mingled gravity and gentleness set the note of bearing and conversation. One cannot doubt the will power imaged in the firm mouth and the thrust of the bold chin, but still less can one resist the frankness and courtesy of the direct, but kindly, glance. He wins one's confidence by the obvious sincerity and candor of his speech, is tolerant of a contrary opinion, and listens with respect to anything that deserves respect. But overemphasis, cock-sureness, dogmatism have short shrift from him. It is not that he rebukes them by word, but that he makes them seem false and crude by contrast with his own serene and governed manner. He is like the skilful horseman who rules his steed not by the whip and the spur, but by the subtle authority of a superior will conveyed through hints that are at once gentle and indisputable. In the midst of his staff his mastery is obvious without being demonstrative. It has the art of evoking the maximum of thought and directing it into the right channels without surrendering any element of respect. It is the art of the judge who encourages the counsel to enlighten him, but preserves his right of judgment.

This impression, of course, is of Sir Douglas in the normal surroundings of his headquarters. I am told that you will have an impression of another sort on the field of action. Here around the table the placid eye and the quiet, assured manner are the key-notes of the man, and it is hard to associate with him the idea of any fierce passion, certainly not the meaner passions of revenge or fear. But in action that formidable chin, as it were, takes the helm, and the fundamental masterfulness

of the man, which wears so polite a mask in ordinary circumstances, comes into action stripped of all disguise. The bedside manner has vanished before the fierce breath of the battle-field. He is not, I am informed, so easy to live with in those circumstances.

This genius for action has been emphasized throughout the war. Behind the scenes there has been much whispering, certainly exaggerated, of the conflict between Lord Kitchener and Sir John French as to the merits of officers. This man, it was suggested, was a favorite of Sir John, that man a favorite of Lord Kitchener. All wars produce this sort of suspicious gossip. Doubtless there is truth in it in the sense that two men will never have quite the same estimates of their subordinates. There is no doubt that the high opinion which Sir John French had of Sir Douglas as the

result of their coöperation in South Africa became strengthened as the war proceeded. Other men won passing praises in his despatches, but his admiration for the qualities of Sir Douglas remained the most constant theme. In the retreat from Mons it was "the skilful manner in which Sir Douglas Haig extricated his corps from an exceptionally difficult position in the darkness of the night" that won his praise. At the Aisne on September 14, 1914, "The action of the First Corps on this day, under the direction and command of Sir Douglas Haig, was of so skilful, bold, and decisive

a character that he gained positions which alone have enabled me to maintain my position for more than three weeks of very severe fighting on the north bank of the river." In the first battle of Ypres the chief honors of victory were again awarded to Sir Douglas: "Throughout this trying period, Sir Douglas Haig, aided by his divisional commanders and his brigade commanders, held the line with marvelous tenacity and undaunted courage. Words fail me to express the admiration I feel for their conduct, or my sense of the incalculable service they have

rendered." When the first forward move was attempted at Neuve Chapelle the First Army Corps was moved southward for the task, and it was Sir Douglas to whom was again committed the executive command in the field. It was an ill-fated venture despite the apparent, but superficial and costly, success, but its failure must be attributed mainly to the then apparently unrealized insufficiency of our artillery preparation. Sir John declared that in this engagement "the energy and vigor with which General Sir Douglas Haig handled his command show him to be a leader of great ability and power." Finally, at Loos, Sir Douglas was again in command of the attack. I have reason to know something of the measure of his confidence in the result of that attack, something also of the extraordinary completeness of the preparation, of the minuteness of the knowledge of the enemy's line, of the groundwork of careful study. upon which that confidence was built. I can conceive something also of his disappointment at the limited achievement. It left not merely Lille, but La Bassée still in the hands of the enemy, and the enemy line only dented with a new salient of questionable value. The main cause of the failure was the fact which has governed the whole story of the siege-warfare-the overwhelming advantage which the defense has over the attack. On the Aisne, at Ypres, on the Yser, at Souchez, in Champagne, at Verdun the story has always been the same, and at the time of writing it would almost seem that the forecast of Bloch had been absolutely fulfilled and that in modern trench war, where the foes were reasonably matched, a decision could not be reached on the battle-field. But there were circumstances in connection with Loos which gravely reflected on the leadership, especially on the divisional staff work and the organization. The early success of the movement exceeded all expectations, and I am told that wireless messages of the Germans ordering the evacuation of La Bassée and Lens were intercepted. But the very success was disastrous. The advance outran

its power of control, and the fatal confusion in the rear prevented the blow from being driven home. It was the latter fact which was the decisive element of failure, and with that element Sir Douglas Haig was not concerned.

When the change in the supreme command was made he was, so far as the public estimate of the possibilities was concerned, the obvious and indeed the only choice. But it was felt to be still an experiment. His record had been one of conspicuous success within certain limits. It had revealed in him many of the qualities of great generalship, caution in preparing his stroke, ingenuity in extricating himself from difficulties, constancy of mind, a temperament of instructed confidence, power of commanding the affections as well as the obedience of subordinates, resolution and impetus in action. There was no other personality in high command for whom the possession of so many of the essentials could be claimed. But it had to be seen in his case, as in the case of General French, whether his various accomplishments included the larger qualities called for in the command of an army of unprecedented magnitude, engaged in a war far remote in character from that with which his chief successes had been won. He went out to Flanders eighteen months ago in command of an army corps: he is to-day in command of an army of not fewer than a million men, probably of not far short of a million and a half men. In this great task the faculties that he revealed in the retreat from Mons, at the Aisne, at Ypres, and at Neuve Chapelle will be valuable, and the experience he gained in those fields will be even more valuable.

But with all this there remains to be proved whether he possesses that large synthesis of war which the occasion demands, the power of piercing through the encumbering perplexities of a vast field of operations to the central fact, the imaginative insight into the purposes of the enemy, the coördination of the myriad parts of his system to the needs of one clearly apprehended purpose. This can

acter.

be discovered only by events, and with these events impending it would be foolish to forecast its future. He has had many successes and no real failure. He possesses beyond doubt all the calculable parts of generalship, in temper, mind, and charHe possesses them, so far as one can judge, in that balance and equipoise without which their worth is negligible. But whether he fuses them with the spark of genius remains to be proved. I should hesitate to say that he does. I should expect to find that extreme competence rather than great original power is his total quality, and that while he might be relied on to make no blunders that careful knowledge, a cautious temper, and a discriminating judgment could avoid, he would not display those incalculable inspirations which are the mark of great genius. But in the absence of superlative genius he is the best that the British army has to offer.

And that fact brings me to what should be the real test of his fitness for the task. Will he have the courage to go to the root of the evil in that army? Will he, defiant of hoary tradition, sweep out inefficiency wherever he finds it, and give brains their chance in this great struggle? The relative failure of the British army has not been due to the failure of the material of which it is composed. There is no better material in Europe. But the officering has been lamentably inadequate. The reason is apparent. The army before the war was a small machine, a trifle in relation to the total of the nation. It drew its officers from a narrow class of society. They were not merely quantitively, but also qualitatively, unrepresentative of the nation. They were a social caste, trained in a tradition of grotesque conservatism and exclusiveness. In the crack regiments no man could hold a commission who was not a man of fortune. The war came, and suddenly the army expanded from a hundred and fifty thousand to a million, two millions, three mil

lions, four millions. The struggle developed phases of warfare which had not only not been studied, but not even seriously considered the aërial conflict, the use of weapons hitherto undreamed of, the application of science to the necessities of war, and so on. But with all this expansion in size and change in requirement, the control remained the same. Hundreds and thousands of brilliant young men from the professions, the universities, the business world entered the army. The very cream of the nation is in the trenches, but at the top all is as before. "Buggins' turn," to use Lord Fisher's phrase, still governs the army. Buggins may be a fool, may be known to be a fool, but he has grown old in the service; he is popular with the mess, he has strong social connections, it would be a scandal not to give him his turn. The story of the Dardanelles reeked with this disease of Buggins. The story of France and Flanders is not much better. Men may be proved incompetent, but they do not disappear. They are not cashiered; they are even promoted. The railways are controlled by soldiers, the air service is largely run by men who do not fly; nowhere does the mere professional give place to the expert, or the decorated antiquity to the man of brains. It is as though a body of parish councilors have suddenly been called upon to administer an empire in the midst of an earthquake, and are imperiling that empire by their insistence on their professional precedence. The question that men are asking in connection with Sir Douglas Haig is whether he is a big enough man to attack this disease and to bring to the army the service of the best brains at his command, regardless of whether they are the brains of Buggins or of Buggins's coachman. I doubt whether he is the man for that heroic work; but I am certain that his success depends upon the ruthlessness with which he uses the surgeon's knife in what is notoriously the diseased tissue of the British army.