General Haldane was friendly to the war correspondents--he had been
something of the kind himself in earlier days--and we were welcomed at
his headquarters, both when he commanded the 3d Division and afterward
when he became commander of the 6th Corps. I thought during the war, and
I think now, that he had more intellect and “quality” than many of
our other generals. A tall, strongly built man, with a distinction of
movement and gesture, not “stocky” or rigid, but nervous and restless,
he gave one a sense of power and intensity of purpose. There was a
kind of slow-burning fire in him--a hatred of the enemy which was not
weakened in him by any mercy, and a consuming rage, as it appeared to
me, against inefficiency in high places, injustice of which he may have
felt himself to be the victim, and restrictions upon his liberty of
command. A bitter irony was often in his laughter when discussing
politicians at home, and the wider strategy of war apart from that
on his own front. He was intolerant of stupidity, which he found
widespread, and there was no tenderness or emotion in his attitude
toward life. The officers and men under his command accused him of
ruthlessness. But they admitted that he took more personal risk than
he need have done as a divisional general, and was constantly in the
trenches examining his line. They also acknowledged that he was generous
in his praise of their good service, though merciless if he found
fault with them. He held himself aloof--too much, I am sure--from his
battalion officers, and had an extreme haughtiness of bearing which was
partly due to reserve and that shyness which is in many Englishmen and a
few Scots.
In the old salient warfare he often demanded service in the way of raids
and the holding of death-traps, and the execution of minor attacks which
caused many casualties, and filled men with rage and horror at what
they believed to be unnecessary waste of life--their life, and their
comrades'--that did not make for popularity in the ranks of the
battalion messes. Privately, in his own mess, he was gracious to
visitors, and revealed not only a wide range of knowledge outside as
well as inside his profession, but a curious, unexpected sympathy for
ideas, not belonging as a rule to generals of the old caste. I liked
him, though I was always conscious of that flame and steel in his nature
which made his psychology a world away from mine. He was hit hard--in
what I think was the softest spot in his heart--by the death of one of
his A. D. C.'s--young Congreve, who was the beau ideal of knighthood,
wonderfully handsome, elegant even when covered from head to foot in wet
mud (as I saw him one day), fearless, or at least scornful of danger,
to the verge of recklessness. General Haldane had marked him out as
the most promising young soldier in the whole army. A bit of shell, a
senseless bit of steel, spoiled that promise--as it spoiled the promise
of a million boys--and the general was saddened more than by the death
of other gallant officers.
I have one memory of General Haldane which shows him in a different
light. It was during the great German offensive in the north, when Arras
was hard beset and the enemy had come back over Monchy Hill and was
shelling villages on the western side of Arras, which until then
had been undamaged. It was in one of these villages--near
Avesnes-le-Compte--to which the general had come back with his corps
headquarters, established there for many months in earlier days, so that
the peasants and their children knew him well by sight and had talked
with him, because he liked to speak French with them. When I went to see
him one day during that bad time in April of '18, he was surrounded by
a group of children who were asking anxiously whether Arras would be
taken. He drew a map for them in the dust of the roadway, and showed
them where the enemy was attacking and the general strategy. He spoke
simply and gravely, as though to a group of staff-officers, and the
children followed his diagram in the dust and understood him perfectly.
“They will not take Arras if I can help it,” he said. “You will be all
right here.”