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Haig, Douglas (1861-1928), British soldier, Commander-in-Chief of British forces in France from 1915 to 1918: born in Edinburgh, educated at Clifton College and Sandhurst, commissioned in the Seventh Hussars in 1885, serving in the Sudan, South Africa and India before helping to modernize the structure of the army in War Office appointments from 1906 to 1909. Haig, a member of the exclusive Marlborough Club, became a personal friend of the future EDWARD VII while still a comparatively junior officer, was a guest at Sandringham before the Boer War and on many later occasions, and was married to one of Queen Alexandra’s maids of honour in the private chapel of Buckingham Palace (1905). He was knighted by Edwa in 1909 and remained a valued friend of GEORGE v throughout the war years. In 1914 he commanded the First Corps of the British Expeditionary Force, at Mons, at Ypres and later at Loos. He succeeded Sir John French as Commander-in-Chief in December 1915. Haig was a professional soldier of great distinction and indomitable resolution, but with no strategic imagination. He was distrusted by the Prime Minister LLOYD GEORGE, not least because of his ready access to the King. Haig’s tenacity rallied his troops after they were forced back by Ludendorff’s offensive in March 1918. He served loyally under FOCH when it became essential to appoint an Allied generalissimo to co-ordinate plans for the great counter-offensive which brought final victory. He was created an Earl in 1919 and voted £100,000 by Parliament. A year later he was given Bemer syde Mansion by public subscription as evidence of the nation’s gratitude for his leadership on the Western Front. He remained Commander-in-Chief of the Home Forces from 1919 to 1921, but spent the last seven years of his life as President of the British Legion, working tirelessly for ex-servicemen, especially for those maimed or blinded during the war. R.Blake (ed.): The Private Papers of Douglas Haig, 1914-1919 (1952); J.Terraine: Douglas Haig, the Educated Soldier (1963); P.Warner: Field Marshal Earl Haig (1991). Haile Selassie (1892-1975), effective ruler of Abyssinia (later Ethiopia) from 1916 to 1936 and 1941 to 1974: born at Harar and known as Ras Tafari Makonnen. He was educated by French mission priests and, as early as 1908, he was entrusted by his cousin, Emperor MENELEK I I (184 1913), with the administration of one of the richest provinces in the country. After a period of

near-anarchy on Menelek’s death, a council of notables elected Ras Tafari Regent in 1916. Modernization, notably the provision of schools and medical facilities, was accompanied during the Regency by increased influence abroad, Abyssinia becoming a member of the League of Nations in 1924. Ras Tafari succeeded to the throne in November 1930, reverting to his baptismal name Haile Selassie at his coronation. Five years of attempted modernization was followed in 1935-6 by an Italian invasion which forced Emperor Haile Selassie into exile, much of it being spent in England, at Bath. He returned to Khartoum in 1940 and followed the Allied armies back into Abyssinia, reentering Addis Ababa in May 1941. After the Second World War his long experience and prestige enabled him to play a prominent role in world politics and African affairs. As he became older, he lost touch with social problems in the remoter districts of Abyssinia, concentrating on spectacular improvements around his capital city. Famine in 1973-4 le d discontent, which was exploited by a group of left-wing army officers. The Emperor was deposed in September 1974 and kept under restraint, until death came to him in his former palace on 27 August 1975. Haile Selassie: My Life and Ethiopia’s Progress (Oxford, 1976); H.W. Lokot: The Mission: the Life, Reign and Character of Haile Selassie (1989). Halifax, Lord (Edward Wood), (1881-1959), Viceroy of India, British Foreign Secretary and ambassador: born at Powderham Castle, Devon, educated at Eton and Christ Church, Oxford. He represented Ripon as Conservative MP from 1910 to 1925, and was a member of the Cabinets of Bonar LAW and BALDWIN (1922-3 and 1924-5) with responsibility for education and, later, for agriculture. In November 1925 he was created Baron Irwin and early in 1926 began five years as Viceroy of India, a period of tension eased in March 1931 by an understanding with Mohandas GANDHI. In July 1932 he returned to the Cabinet as President of the Board of Education, becoming Viscount Halifax on the death of his father in 1934. He was War Minister for five undistinguished months in 1935, before being appointed Lord Privy Seal, with particular responsibility for European affairs, in November 1835. In this capacity he sought to sound out HITLER and MUSSOLINI personally and was so closely in the confidence of Neville CHAMBERLAIN that he was a natural choice as Foreign Secretary in succession to EDEN in February 1938. He was at the Foreign Office until December 1940, gradually inducing Chamberlain to abandon appeasement. A proposal that Halifax, rather than Winston CHURCHILL should succeed Chamberlain as Prime Minister in May 1940 was defeated, largely on the initiative of the Labour leaders who made it clear to GEORGE VI that they would not serve in a coalition government under Halifax. In January 1941, reluctantly, Halifax went to Washington as ambassador. There he remained for ten years, achieving greater personal success than in any other post in his public career. He was also Chancellor of Oxford University for twenty-six years, from 1933 until his death. Lord Halifax: Fullness of Days (1957); Lord Birkenhead: Halifax (1965); R.J.Moore: The Crisis of Indian Unity (Oxford, 1974);

K.Middlemass: Diplomacy of Il-lusion; the British Government and Germany, 1937-39 (1972); A.Roberts: The Holy Fox, a Biography of Lord Halifax (1991). Halsey, William Frederick (1882-1959), American Admiral, Commander of the South Pacific Fleet in 1942-3 and the US Third Fleet in 1944-5: born in Elizabeth, New Jersey, graduated from the Naval Academy at Annapolis in 1904 and served in destroyers based on Queenstown, Ireland, in 1917-18. By 1941 he was an Admiral, flying his flag in the aircraft-carrier Enterprise. He commanded the fleet throughout the Solomon Islands campaign, gaining a decisive victory over the Japanese at Guadalcanal (12-15 November 1942). ‘Bull’ Halsey argued that naval battles between rival fleets of capital ships had, by 1942, become as antiquated as the tactics of Nelson’s day; all Halsey’s engagements were decided by air power. Planes from his carriers won the battle of Leyte Gulf in October 1944 and launched the major attacks upon the home islands of Japan in July 1945. It was appropriate that the Japanese surrender should have been signed aboard his flagship, USS Missouri, in Tokyo Bay on 2 September 1945. He was promoted Fleet Admiral at the end of that year. Ill-health forced him to retire from the navy in 1947. W.F.Halsey and J.Bryan: Admiral Halsey’s Story (New York, 1946); E.B.Potter: Bull Halsey (Annapolis, Md., 1985). Hammarskjöld, Dag (1905-61), Secretary-General of the United Nations from 1953 until his death: born at Jönk-öping in Sweden, studied at Stockholm University and held high administrative posts in the labour and finance ministries of Sweden from 1936 to 1946. From 1951 to 1953 he was Sweden’s Foreign Minister, heading the Swedish delegation to the United Nations Assembly in 1952. On 7 April 1953 he succeeded Trygve LIE as Secretary-General, and was re-elected in 1957. He showed strict impartiality and dignified calm during the double crisis of 1956, caused by Soviet intervention in Hungary and by British, French and Israeli collaboration in the Suez Crisis. Nevertheless he was personally criticized by KHRUSCHEV for his attitude to the-successive crises in the Congo in 1960-1. It was while on a mission to seek peace in the Congo that Hammarskjöld met his death, his plane crashing near Ndola (18 September 1961). He was posthumously awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for 1961. Sithu U THANT succeeded him as Secretary-General of the United Nations. B.Urquhart: Hammarskjöld (1973); W.Foote: Dag Hammarskjöld-Servant of Peace (1962). Hanna, Mark (Marcus Alonzo) (1837-1904), American businessman and party boss: born in Lisbon, Ohio, entering his father’s grocery business in Cleveland in 1858. As he extended his commercial interests, becoming very rich, he insisted that the wisest government for America came from its businessmen and the Republican Party was the surest guarantee of a safe, businessmen’s administration. By 1890 his wealth and intelligence had made Hanna the boss of the Republican Party in Ohio, as well as gaining him extensive mining and transport interests. His chosen presidential candidate from 1890 onwards was MCKINLEY, whom he saw safely returned as Governor of Ohio in 1891 and 1893. His campaign contributions to McKinley’s victory in the presidential election of 1896 were without precedent at that time. Mark Hanna himself was

returned to the Senate (where he sat from 1897 until his death) and he had total control of the Republican Party machine. His only miscalculation was in compromising with the Republican Party boss in New York, Thomas Platt, in 1900, accepting Platt’s nominee, Theodore ROOSEVELT as McKinley’s running-mate; for when McKinley was assassinated in September 1901, Roosevelt became President, thereby depriving Hanna-and, indeed, Platt —of the power enjoyed by mastery of the party during a weak presidency. Hanna’s concentration on national politics also lost him control of Cleveland where a reforming Mayor, Tom Johnson (1854-1911), was in office from 1901 to 1909, rooting out Hanna’s dominance. There is no suggestion Hanna himself was blatantly dishonest, but he accepted that others in political life had their price, and he did nothing to clean up the corruption which was corroding the party machine. T.Beer: Hanna, Crane and the Mauve Decade (New York, 1941; a single-volume reprint of three earlier books); H. Croly: Marcus Alonso Hanna (New York, n.d.). Hardie, (James) Keir (1856-1915), first British socialist Member of Parliament: born in Lanarkshire, near Holytown, the son of a ship’s carpenter. He sold newspapers at the age of 7 and worked down a coalmine at the age of 10, educating himself at night-school and learning public speaking from Nonconformist chapel ministers and at temperance societies, before emerging as the miners’ trade union leader. He believed that the workers’ political representation suffered in Britain from too close an association with middle-class Liberals and therefore in 1888 he established a Scottish Parliamentary Labour Party. Eventually, however, he was returned to Westminster as MP for a London dockland constituency, winning West Ham, South as an Independent Socialist in 1892. A year later he became founder Chairman of the Independent Labour Party, but he lost his dockland seat in the 1895 General Election. Merthyr Tydfil returned him to Parliament in 1900 and he represented this Welsh mining constituency until his death. In February 1900 he took a major role at the meeting in Farringdon Street, London, which set up a Labour Representation Committee (LRC;) and it was Keir Hardie who proposed that Labour should form a ‘distinct group’ in the Commons. Only one other LRC candidate was returned in that year’s election, but in 1906 the LRC put up fifty candidates, and twenty-nine of them were elected. The LRC changed its name to Labour, Party later that year and accepted Keir Hardie as Chairman of the parliamentary group. His religious approach, finding socialist teachings in the New Testament and delivering political addresses which were more than once reported as ‘eloquent sermons’, stole much of the traditional ‘chapel’ vote from the Liberals and helped mark off British socialism from its so-called scientific counterpart on the European mainland. Over foreign affairs he was a pacifist and strongly anti-Tsarist, denouncing the ‘secret diplomacy’ which led Britain into war in 1914. K.O.Morgan: Keir Hardie (1975); H.Pelling: Origins of the Labour Party, 18801900 (rev. edn 1965).