Page:EB1922 - Volume 31.djvu/406

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370
HIGGINSON—HINDENBURG

The Holy Land (1910) and The Near East (1913), as well as tales of the supernatural, of which The Dweller on the Threshold (1911) is the best example. Of his dramatized novels Bella Donna, produced at the St. James's theatre, London, in 1911-2, and The Garden of Allah, produced first in New York and (1920) at Drury Lane theatre, London, were the most successful.

HIGGINSON, HENRY LEE (1834-1919), American banker, was born in New York City Nov. 18 1834. At the age of 17 he entered Harvard College but before finishing his course entered the banking house of S. & E. Austin, of Boston. He later went to Vienna for a year, where he studied music. On the outbreak of the Civil War he was commissioned second lieutenant of volun- teers and was soon promoted to first lieutenant. Later he was made captain and transferred to the volunteer cavalry, being promoted major in 1862 and two years later brevetted lieutenant-colonel. In 1863 he was severely wounded at Aldie, Va., and in the following year was honqurably discharged, after serving for a time on the staff of Maj.-Gen. Barlow. In 1868 he joined the banking firm of Lee, Higginson & Co., of Boston, with whom he remained until his death. His interest in music led to his founding the Boston Symphony Orchestra in 1881. A long line of distinguished directors placed this organization in the first rank. It was a stimulating source of musical education in America and won full recognition abroad. In 1891 as a memorial to certain friends who died in the Civil War, he presented Soldiers' Field to Harvard University. In these extensive athletic grounds the Stadium was built. In 1899 he erected the Harvard Union as a general meeting-place for all yndergraduates. He was a trustee of numerous institutions, including the New England Conservatory of Music, and was for many years a fellow of Harvard University. He died in Boston, Mass., Nov. 14 1919.

See Bliss Perry, The Life and Letters of Henry Lee Higginson (1921).

HIGGINSON, THOMAS WENTWORTH (1823-1911), American author (see 13.455), died in Cambridge, Mass., May 9 1911. See T. W. Higginson: The Story of His Life (1914), by M. T. Higginson (his wife).

HILDEBRANDSSON, HUGO HILDEBRAND (1838- ), Swedish meteorologist, was born at Stockholm Aug. 19 1838, and was educated at the Stockholm gymnasium and the university of Upsala, where he took his doctor's degree in 1858, becoming doctor of physics in 1866. In 1878 he was appointed first professor of meteorology at Upsala and director of the meteorological observatory there, retaining these posts until 1906. He was a prominent member of the International Meteorological Com- mittee, and for some years served as its secretary, while he also sat on the Nobel Committee for Physics, in 1900 obtaining the Nobel prize. In 1880 he was elected an hon. fellow of the Royal Meteorological Society of London, which in 1920 awarded him the Symons gold medal, being also a member of many foreign scientific societies.

As a meteorologist Hildebrandsson is remarkable for his researches into the subject of cloud, and in 1880 was requested by the Inter- national Meteorological Committee to prepare the International Cloud Atlas, a work carried out in conjunction with Leon Teisserenc de Bort. Many further observations were subsequently incorporated in Les bases de la meteorologie dynamique (1907), in which Teisserenc de Bort again collaborated. His papers on centres of action of the atmosphere mark a great advance in seasonal forecasts.

HILL, DAVID JAYNE (1850- ), American diplomat and publicist, was born at Plainfield, N.J., June 19 1850. After graduating in 1874 from the university of Lewisburg, Pa. (later known as Bucknell University) , he taught there first as instructor in Greek and Latin and from 1877 as professor of rhetoric. In 1879 he was elected president of Bucknell and in 1888 of the university of Rochester. In 1896 he resigned and went abroad to study public law. He returned in 1898 on being appointed Assistant Secretary of State by President McKinley. While in Washington he was also professor of European diplomacy in the School of Comparative Jurisprudence and Diplomacy. In 1903 he was appointed ambassador to Switzerland and in 1905 was transferred to Holland, where he remained two years. He was a delegate to the Second Peace Conference at The Hague in 1907.

From 1908 to 1911 he was ambassador to Germany, resigning in the latter year. In 1914 he was an unsuccessful candidate for the Republican nomination for the U.S. Senate to succeed Elihu Root. In 1920 he was made a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

His best known work is his History of Diplomacy in the Inter- national Development of Europe, embracing A Struggle for Universal Empire (1905); The Establishment of Territorial Sovereignty (1906) and The Diplomacy of the Age of Absolutism (1914). His other numerous writings include a Life of Washington Irving (1877) ; a Life of William Cullen Bryant (1878); The Science of Rhetoric (1878); The Elements of Psychology (1886) ; The Social Influence of Christian- ity (1888); Principles and Fallacies of Socialism (1888); Genetic Philosophy (1893); The Conception and Realization of Neutrality (1902) ; World Organization as Affected by the Nature of the Modern State (1911, being lectures delivered at Columbia University); The People's Government (1915); Americanism What It Is (1916); The Rebuilding of Europe (1917); Impressions of the Kaiser (1918); Present Problems in Foreign Policy (1919) and American World Policies (1920).

HILL, JAMES J(EROME) (1838-1916), American railway capitalist (see 13.464), died at St. Paul, Minn., May 29 1916. He resigned the chairmanship of the board of directors of the Great Northern railway in 1912. He had long thought that the farmers and millers of the north-west needed a large financial institution near at hand to which they could easily turn for aid. Accordingly in 1913 he secured control of the First and the Second National Banks of St. Paul and merged them, thereby increasing local facilities for loans. On the outbreak of the World War he was deeply interested in the cause of the Allies,and exerted all his influence in behalf of the Anglo-French loan of 1915. On learning in the same year that friends had raised $125,000 for establishing as a tribute to him a chair of transportation at Harvard he added a like amount. During his latter years he gave much attention to developing the Hill Reference library, in St. Paul, to which he contributed liberally. He was the owner of a remarkable collection of modern French paintings, including fine examples of Puvis de Chavannes, Corot, Delacroix, Millet and others. He was the author of Highways of Progress (1910). He left no will, and his estate, when appraised, amounted to less than $60,000,000, only about one-fourth in railroad securities.

HILL, OCTAVIA (1838-1912), English philanthropic worker (see 13.465), died in London Aug. 13 1912.

HINDENBURG, PAUL VON (1847- ), German soldier, chief of the great general staff during the World War, was born on Oct. 2 1847 at Posen. His full family name was von Beneckendorf und Hindenburg. His promotion was slow; from 1877 to 1884 he served on the general staff, but he was 47 years of age when he became colonel, and 49 when he attained a military position of higher importance as chief of the general staff of the VIII. Army Corps. In 1904, when he was 57, he was appointed to the command of the IV. Army Corps, and in 1911 was placed on the retired list, at the instance, it is said, of the Emperor William II. (who had criticized manoeuvres of his corps). While in command of this Eastern Corps he had thoroughly studied the strategy, and above all the geography, of a possible war with Russia, a fact which was widely known in the German army, but to which the German Emperor does not appear, at the time, to have attached importance. When, at the outbreak of the World War, East Prussia was overrun by the armies of Rennenkampf, military opinion turned to Hindenburg, and he was recalled from his retirement at Hanover, and appointed to the command of the VIII. Army with Ludendorff as his chief of staff. In Aug. and Sept. he won the victories of Tannenberg and the Masurian Lakes, which were decisive for the deliverance of East Prussia and for the prospects of any Russian advance into Germany, upon which sections of opinion in the Entente countries were reckoning. In the summer of 1915 he planned and executed a German advance against Riga, Diinaburg and Molodetschno. In acknowledgment of his victories he had meanwhile been advanced, on Aug. 27 1914, to the rank of colonel-general (Generalobersl), and, on Nov. 27 of the same year, to that of field-marshal. He had further been appointed, in Nov. 1914, chief in command over the armies of the East, a command which was extended at the beginning of Aug. 1916 so as to embrace sections