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."