Toward 1940

COMMONWEALTH (British Commonwealth of Nations)

Softly from Scotch bagpipes there sounded, last week, in the depths of Westminster Abbey, that lilting, infinitely plaintive tune, The Flowers of the Forest. One of many hundreds who harkened and wept slow, heartfelt tears was a great statesman who sometimes appears too slick, too superficial and too dapper, Mr.

David Lloyd George. Grief had welled up in every loyal Briton's heart, and with good cause. The Empire was laying to rest her greatest soldier, the Scotchman who commanded all her armies in France from 1915 until the final victory, Field Marshal Earl Haig (TIME, Feb. 6).

Came rumbling toward Westminster Abbey the battered gun carriage from which was fired the first British gun that boomed upon the continent of Europe at the opening of the World War. Upon that carriage had later lain the body of the British "Unknown Soldier" as it was borne to rest beneath the white Cenotaph in Whitehall. Last week the unique gun carriage bore not the unknown but the best known British soldier. On the flag which draped the coffin lay Earl Haig's sword, unsheathed, and beside it his Field Marshal's baton and massive white plumed hat.

Stepping slowly behind, came a proud bay charger, the favorite mount of a Field Marshal who never forgot that he was first and always a cavalryman. Now Earl Haig's high black boots rested empty in the stirrups with their toes symbolically reversed.

Empty the saddle. Empty the scabbard.

Sadly leading the prancing bay steed walked Sergeant Secrett, personal attendant to Earl Haig for many a year, now clad in mufti, his breast ablaze with medals won in action, his eyes streaming tears which he did not brush away.

Behind the heavy bier and the light saddle walked three princes: Edward of Wales, Albert of York and Prince Henry, representing their father the King-Emperor.* Then, bravely, resolutely, came Dorothy Countess Haig, her head and figure bowed and heavily veiled.

Last in importance but first and omnipresent in display came the companions in arms of Marshal Haig: the Lancers, the Queen's Own Hussars, the Royal Horse Guards upon their matched chestnut horses, the King's Own Scottish Borderers (better known as "The Ladies from Hell"), finally the Foot Guards in towering fur busbies, the Welsh, Coldstream and Grenadier Guards.

At this sorrowful pageant not less than 1,000,000 Britons gazed reverently, last week, as it wound through three and a half miles of London streets. When the principal service began at Westminster Abbey millions more heard over the radio Earl Haig's favorite hymn, Onward, Christian Soldiers. To convey the coffin within the abbey came as most august pall bearers, Field Marshal Ferdinand Foch, Field

Marshal Henri Philippe Petain, Viscount Byng of Vimy, Admirals Beatty and Jellicoe, and, symbolically to the fore of the bier, clad in a greenish-brown Belgian uniform, Baron de Ceynick, Field Marshal of the Belgian Army, special representative of King Albert of the Belgians in whose realm was launched the first British attack of the War.

Though the Cabinet and Princes and Generals of the Empire honored Earl Haig at Westminster Abbey, last week, he was not there laid to rest. Neither does he lie with the great Duke of Wellington and most of Britain's foremost warrior dead in "The Parish Church of the Empire," St.

Paul's Cathedral. Instead, by Earl Haig's specific request, his body was taken to Scotland, last week, there to be interred at Dryburgh Abbey, not far from Bemersyde, the ancestral seat of which 29 scions of the House of Haig have been consecutively Scotch Lairds.

When the last muffled drums beat a tattoo above the Earl's grave, there would still remain, however, much which the World hopes eagerly to hear from Douglas Haig.

His diary, voluminous and known to teem with scathing comments upon the wartime statesmen with whom he was obliged to deal, lies locked in a great safe at the British Museum. By the terms of his last will it is destined to thunder his rebukes and apportion his measured praise in 1940.

*Their Majesties attend funerals only when the deceased is a royal personage, such as the late Dowager Queen Alexandria (TIME, Nov. 30, Dec. 7, 1925).