4 DECEMBER 1936, Page 21

LORD HAIG

[To the Editor of THE SPECTATOR.] Silt,—I wish to thank you for the dignified and emphatic protest which, in reviewing Mr. Lloyd Georges latest volume of War Memories, you utter against that gentleman's renewed attacks on the character of Lord Haig. Lord Haig's character does not require vindication ; it is a rock against which the waves of obloquy beat in vain. But it is not amiss that those of us who knew him intimately, and for whom his character was an open book, should take our stand on the things which we know, and proclaim that Mr. Lloyd Georges presentation bears no relation to the truth as we know it. As for the alleged " panic " preceding the appointment of Foch as Generalissimo, I may add one word of personal testimony for *hat it is worth. On that critical Sunday, March 24th, 1918, at the close of which he telegraphed to London asking that the Secretary for War and the C..I.G.S. should come over immediately, I lunched quietly% with him, and earlier in the day I had had a conversation of peculiar intimacy with him before DiVine Service ; and I can assert that, whatever panic

there may have been in others, there was none in him. He was perfectly steady, perfectly resolute ; and as usual his steadiness and resolution spread to others. It was as if he already saw clearly what would have to be done, and was prepared to do it.

GEORGE S. DUNCAN,

Chaplain to the Forces, G.H.Q., France, St. Mary's College, St. Andrews. 1915-1919.