Rear Admiral de Chair was born August 30, 1864. He entered the Royal Navy at the age of 14, and received his early training aboard His Majesty's Ship Britannia. He served in the Egyptian war and was naval attache at Washington in 1902.
Admiral de Chair commanded the Bacchante, Cochrane and Colossus successively in the years between 1905 and 1912. From 1912 to 1914 he acted as Assistant Controller of the Navy and subsequently he was the Naval Secretary to the First Lord of the Admiralty. At the outbreak of the war he became Admiral of the training services and of the Tenth Cruiser Squadron. Admiral de Chair is a member of the Royal Victorian Order and a Companion of the Bath.
LORD WALTER CUNLIFFE.
Lord Walter Cunliffe, Governor of the Bank of England, is 52 years old. He received his education at Harrow and at Trinity College, Cambridge, from which he graduated with the degree of Master of Arts. He is a Lieutenant of the City of London.
Lord Cunliffe has been active in the banking field for many years and is a member of the firm of Cunliffe Brothers. He is a Director of the North Eastern Railway Company and has been a Director of the Bank of England since 1895. He became Deputy Governor of the bank in 1911 and has been Governor since 1913. Lord Cunliffe is the first Governor of the Bank of England to receive the honor of re-election after serving his term of two years. In 1914 he was created the First Baron of Headley.
Among the dominating characters of the war and upon whose judgment and ability the destinies of France and the Allies depended for a long period is General Robert Nivelle, Commander of the French armies, and who succeeded General Joffre. General Nivelle is a man of silence; he speaks little. General Nivelle is four years younger than Joffre.
As a boy of fourteen he could not take part as did Joffre and Gallieni and Pau and Kitchener also, in the tragical war of 1870. Joffre studied at the Ecole Polytechnique, in Paris; Gallieni, at Saint Cyr, without the walls; Nivelle studied at both; he may claim to belong to all arms, artillery, infantry—even cavalry. And, in his youth, he was not only a magnificent all-round athlete, as indeed he still is, but also a headlong rider of steeplechases, in which, had he been fated to break his neck, his neck would infallibly have been broken. This is a trait he shares with General Brussiloff, and, like the great Russian General, he was famous for the skill with which he tamed and trained cavalry mounts.
SERVES AS JUNIOR OFFICER.
As a junior officer Nivelle saw service in the French General Staff; his part in the expedition to China we have recorded; he also served in Northern Africa. So that, like Joffre, Gallieni, Lyantey, Roques and so many leaders of French armies, Nivelle gained an invaluable element of his training in the out-of-the-way corners of France's vast colonial empire, which has outposts in every continent and measures nearly five million square miles.
At the outbreak of the World War Nivelle, with the rank of Colonel, commanded the Fifth Regiment of Artillery, which is the artillery element of the Seventh Army Corps, the corps of Besancon and the old Franche-Comte, under the Jura Mountains, at the corner of Switzerland and Alsace.