The First Hundred Thousand

Major John Hay Beith (Ian Hay) (1876-1952) from Edinburgh, Scotland was a soldier, novelist, and playwright. He was educated at Fettes College, Edinburgh and St. Johns College, Cambridge. He was a second-lieutenant in the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders and was in France in April of 1915 and was one of the first 100,000 of Kitchener's Army. He was awarded the Military Cross. He was Director of Public Relations at the War Office (1938-1941). The First Hundred Thousand (1916) is his best-known work and is marked by the same sharp sense of humour as his other work: ""War is hell, and all that, but it has a good deal to recommend it. It wipes out all the small nuisances of peace-time."" All In It: K(1) Carries On (1917) and Carrying On (1917) were also popular books of his. Other works include Tilly of Bloomsbury (1919), The Right Stuff (1908), A Man's Man (1909), A Safety Match (1911), and Happy-Go- Lucky (1913).