orthy end."

IMPORTANT DATES IN KITCHENER'S LIFE

1850. June 24. Herbert Horatio Kitchener born.
1865. Sent to Switzerland to school.
1868. Entered Royal Military Academy, at Woolwich.
1870. Volunteered in French army against Prussia.
1874. Sent as second-lieutenant to Palestine, with exploration party.
1878. Surveyed Island of Cyprus, for British Government.
1885. Lieutenant-colonel of cavalry in Egypt.
1893. Sirdar, or commander-in-chief, of Egyptian army.
1898. Created a baron.
1900. Chief of staff to Roberts in South Africa.
1902. Made general, and commander-in-chief in India.
1911. Consul-general in Egypt.
1914. Secretary of War. Field marshal.
1916. June 5. Lost his life at sea.

HAIG

THE MAN WHO LED "THE CONTEMPTIBLES"

"There goes young Haig. He says he intends to be a soldier."

The speaker was a young student at Oxford University, as he jerked his
thumb in the direction of a slight but well-set-up fellow, a classmate,
who went cantering past.

The chance remark, made more than once during the college days of Field
Marshal Haig, struck the keynote of his career. From early boyhood
Douglas Haig was going to be a soldier; and he stuck to his guns in a
quiet, systematic way until he won out.

The story of Haig's life until the time of the Great War, was the
opposite of spectacular, and even in it, his personal prowess was kept
studiously in the background. With him it has always been: "My men did
thus and so." Yet in his quiet way he has always made his presence
felt with telling effect. He has been the man behind the man behind
the gun.

By birth Haig was a "Fifer," which sounds military without being so.
He was a native of Cameronbridge, County of Fife, and came of the
strictest Presbyterian Scotch. If he had lived a few centuries back he
would have been a Covenanter--the kind that carried a Bible in one hand
and a gun in the other. He was born, June 19, 1861, the youngest son
of John Haig, a local Justice of the Peace. His mother was a Veitch of
Midlothian.

The family, while not wealthy, was comfortably situated. The Haig
children grew up as countrywise rather than townbred, having many a
romp over the rolling country leading to the Highlands. But more than
once on such a jaunt would come the inquiry: "Where's Douglas?" (We
doubt whether they ever shortened it to "Doug," as they would have done
in America.) And back would come