The men associated with the Beaver Club, the predecessors of the Square Milers, had almost all served in the Canadian Militia and on the outbreak of the First World War the next generation did not hesitate to take up arms. At his own expense, Hamilton Gault raised Princess Patricia's Canadian Light Infantry, the last privately raised regiment in the British Empire. He was injured three times leading his regiment into battle, and even after losing a leg he still returned to the Front. Lord Strathcona's Horse, raised by that Canadian peer for the Boer War, was once again returned to action. The British Prime Minister David Lloyd George claimed to his biographer that had the war continued into 1919, he would have sought to replace Field Marshal Douglas Haig with the Square Mile's General Sir Arthur Currie.