LORD HALDANE
"He is Attic in the sense that he has no bombast, and does not strive after affect, and that he can speak interestingly on many subjects 'without raising his voice.'"—GILBERT MURRAY (on Xenophon).
If for nothing else, the nation owes Lord Haldane a debt of gratitude for the example he has given it in behaviour. No man so basely deserted by his colleagues and so scandalously traduced by his opponents ever faced the world with a greater calm or a more untroubled smile.
Lessing said of grief in sculpture that it may writhe but it must not scream. Lord Haldane has not even writhed. When a member of the House of Lords asked him what he proposed doing with the two sacks crammed full of abusive letters addressed to him there by correspondents who thus obeyed a vulgar editor's suggestion, Lord Haldane replied with very good humour, "I have an oyster-knife in my kitchen and an excellent scullery-maid in my establishment: I shall see only my personal letters."
In the darkest hour of his martyrdom, when the oldest and staunchest of his political friends maintained an absolute silence, he gave no sign of suffering and uttered no single word either of surprise or bitterness. He seemed to some of us in those days almost wanting in sensibility, almost inhuman in his serenity. Newspaper articles which made most of us either wince or explode with anger did nothing more to the subject of their vilification than to set him off laughing—a comfortable, soft-sounding, and enjoying laughter which brought a light into his face and gently shook his considerable shoulders. He loved to produce at those moments the encomiums pronounced on his work at the War Office by those very newspapers only a few years before at the hour of his triumphant retirement.
This tranquillity of spirit owed nothing to an unimpressionable mind or a thick skin. One came to see that it was actually that miracle of psychology, a philosophic temperament in action. I believe he could have the toothache without a grimace. He has not only studied philosophy, he has become a philosopher, and not merely a philosopher in theory but a philosopher in soul—a practising philosopher. He might stagger for a moment under the shock of a tremendous sorrow to one whom he loved, but not all the shovings of all the halfpenny editors of our commercialized journalism, not even the most contemptible desertion of his friends, could move his equilibrium by a hair's breadth.
After the noble tributes paid to him by Lord Haig and Lord French I need not trouble the reader by dealing with the accusations brought against the greatest of our War Ministers by the gutter-press or by the baser kind of politicians. It is now acknowledged in all circles outside of Bedlam that Lord Haldane prepared a perfect instrument of war which, shot like an arrow from its bow, saved the world from a German victory, and among the intellectual soldiers it is generally held that if France and Russia had been as well prepared to fulfil their engagements as we were to fulfil ours the war would have ended in an almost immediate victory for the Allies.[2]
It will be more instructive to ask how a man who never made an enemy in his life, and for whom many of our greatest men have a deep affection, came of a sudden to be the target of such general and overwhelming abuse. I think I can do something to clear up this mystery.
When he saw that the great conflict was inevitable, Lord Haldane suggested to Mr. Asquith, then acting as War Secretary, that he should go down to the War Office, where he was still well known and very popular with the intellectual generals, and mobilize his own machine for war. The harassed and overburdened Mr. Asquith gratefully accepted this suggestion.
Accordingly Lord Haldane went down to the War Office, and knowing that speed was the one thing to save us from a German avalanche, began to mobilize the Expeditionary Force. Some of the generals were alarmed. War was not yet declared. The cost of mobilization ran into millions. Suppose war did not come after all, how were those millions to be met? Lord Haldane brushed aside every consideration of this kind. Mobilization was to be pushed on, cost what it might. He had not studied his Moltke to no profit.
On leaving the War Office that same day, after having mobilized the British Army, he went across to the Foreign Office and was there stopped by a certain soldier who asked him how many divisions he was sending to France. Lord Haldane very naturally rebuked this person for asking such a question, telling him that war was not yet declared and that therefore perhaps no divisions at all would go to France.
Never was a just reproof more fatal to him who administered it.
I believe this soldier went straight off to an important Civil Servant with the sensational news that Lord Haldane was holding back the Expeditionary Force, and afterwards carried the same false news to one of the most violent anti-German publicists in London, a frenzied person who enjoys nevertheless a certain power in Unionist circles. In a few hours it was all over London that the Liberals were going to desert France, that Lord Haldane, a friend of the German Kaiser, had got back to the War Office, and that he was preventing mobilization.
I am quite willing to believe that the snubbed soldier honestly thought he was spreading a true story: I am sure that the frenzied publicist believed this story with all the lunatic fervour of his utterly untrained and utterly intemperate mind; but what I cannot bring myself to believe for a moment is that the Unionist statesman to whom this story was taken, and who there and then gave orders for a campaign against Lord Haldane, was inspired by any motive less immoral, less cynical, and less disgraceful to a man of honour than a desire for office.
He saw the opportunity of discrediting the Liberal Government through Lord Haldane and took it. The Cabinet was to fall under suspicion because one of its members could be accused of pro-Germanism. Lord Haldane, against whom his friend Lord Morley now brings the sorrowful charge that he was responsible for the war; Lord Haldane, against whom all the German writers have brought charges of stealing their War Office secrets and of defeating their diplomacy, was to be called a pro-German—a man actually doing Germany's work in the British War Office. And this for a Party purpose.
Mr. Arthur Balfour, by nature the most selfish of men and also an intemperate lover of office, would never have stooped to such dishonour; but among the leaders of the Unionist Party there was to be found a man who saw in a lie the opportunity for a Party advantage and took it.
In these matters a statesman need not show himself. A word to one or two newspaper proprietors is sufficient. Nor need he hunt up any arguments. The newspaper reporter will not leave a dust-bin unsearched. One word, nay, the merest hint is sufficient. So stupid, so supine, is the public, that Fleet Street will undertake to destroy a man's reputation in a week or two.
It was in this fashion that Lord Haldane fell.
"You have killed me," says Socrates, "because you thought to escape from giving an account of your lives. But you will be disappointed. There are others to convict you, accusers whom I held back when you knew it not, they will be harsher inasmuch as they are younger, and you will wince the more."
One day the full truth of this scandalous story will be told, and the historian will then pronounce a judgment which will leave an indelible stain on the reputation of some who with a guilty conscience now sun themselves in the prosperity of public approval. Their children will not read that judgment without bitter shame.
I condemn in this matter not only the man who gave the order for calumny and slander to set to work but, first, the friends of Lord Haldane who kept silence, and, second, the democracy of these islands which allowed itself to be deceived and exploited by the lowest kind of newspapers.
Why was Sir Edward Grey silent? He was living in Lord Haldane's house at the time, and, agonizing over the abhorrent prospect of European slaughter and striving to the point of a nervous collapse to avert this calamity, was devotedly served and strengthened by his host. Why was he silent?
Why was Mr. Asquith silent? He knew that Lord Haldane had delivered the War Office from chaos and had given to this country for the first time in its history a coherent and brilliantly efficient weapon for this very purpose of a war with Germany. He spoke when it was too late. Why did he not speak when the hounds were in full cry?
And why were Mr. Lloyd George and Mr. Winston Churchill silent? Could they not have told the nation that they had grudged Lord Haldane his Army estimates, and that they had even suggested another and less expensive scheme of national defence—a scheme that was actually examined by the War Office experts and condemned?
Let Mr. Lloyd George look back. If he had had his way with the War Office could Germany have been stopped from reaching Paris and seizing the Channel ports? Moreover, if he had had his way, could he himself have hoped to escape hanging on a lamp-post? Is it not true to say that in saving France from an overwhelming and almost immediate destruction the British Expeditionary Force also saved his neck, the neck of Mr. Winston Churchill, and the necks of all the Cabinet? But if this is so, and his own conscience shall be the judge, how is it that he said no word to the nation which might have saved Lord Haldane from martyrdom?
The nation, I think, does not know what it loses in allowing its judgment to be stampeded by unconscionable journalism. Lord Haldane is no political dilettante. Few men in modern times have brought to politics a mind so trained in right thinking, or a spirit so full of that impressive quality, as Morley calls it, the presentiment of the eve: "a feeling of the difficulties and interests that will engage and distract mankind on the morrow." Long ago he foresaw the need in our industrial life of the scientific spirit, and in our democracy of a deeper and more profitable education. "Look at Scotland, the best educated nation; and at Ireland, the worst!" For these things he prepared. Long ago, too, he thought out a better and a complete system of Cabinet government. Long ago he had seen that the enmity between Capital and Labour must be brought to an end and an entirely new relation brought into existence, identifying the prosperity of the one with the other. For this, too, he had a scheme. These things were the chief concern of his life, and only for these things did he remain in politics.
The nation would have been in a healthier condition if Lord Haldane's reasoned policy had been acted upon and Mr. Lloyd George's talent for oratory had been employed to explain that reasoned policy to the less educated sections of the public, instead of used to arouse an angry opposition to the unreasoned and disconnected reforms of his own conception.
But what a topsy-turvy world! Mr. Lloyd George is "the man who won the war," he who did nothing to prepare for it, and suggested some things that might have made it difficult to be won; while Lord Haldane, who did prepare for it, and whose work did save the whole world, is cast out of office. And when the war is won, and Lord Haldane's position has been publicly and nobly vindicated by Lord Haig, Mr. Lloyd George as Prime Minister of England has a portfolio for Mr. Austen Chamberlain and another for Dr. Macnamara, but none for this man to whom more than to any other politician he owes his place and perhaps his life.
Lord Haldane is not what Prodicus used to call "a Boundary Stone, half philosopher and half practical statesman." His philosophy is his statesmanship, and his statesmanship is his philosophy. He has brought to the study of human life a profound mind and a trained vision. His search after truth has destroyed in him all pettiness of personal ambition. He desires, because he regards it as the highest kind of life, to further the work of creative evolution, to be always on the side of spiritual forces, and never to be deceived by transitory materialism. Democracy has need of these qualities, and a great empire without such qualities in its statesmen can hardly endure the test of time.
His faults are a too generous confidence in the good sense of democracy and a lack of impassioned energy. He is too much a thinker, too little a warrior. Unhappily he is not an effective speaker, and his writing is not always as clear as his ideas. He is at his best in conversation with men whom he likes.
His activity is enormous, but it is the activity of the scholar. He works far into the night, takes little or no exercise, and avoids "that dance of mimes"—the life of society. By hard reading he keeps himself abreast of knowledge in almost every one of its multitudinous departments and will go a long journey to hear a scientific lecture or to take part in a philosophical discussion. He is the friend of philosophers, theologians, men of science, men of letters, and many a humble working man. He was never privately deserted in the long months of his martyrdom. His charming London house, so refined and so dignified in its simplicity, was the frequent meeting-place of many even in those bad days when the door outside was daubed with paint, the windows broken, and a police-man stood on guard. A few of us wished he took his ill-treatment with a fiercer spirit; but looking back now I think that even the youngest of us perceives that he was unconsciously teaching us by his behaviour one of the noblest lessons to be learned in the school of life.
Let his fate teach democracy that when it has found a leader whom it can trust, it must be prepared to fight for him as well as to follow him. No statesman is safe from the calumny of newspapers, and no statesman violently and persistently attacked in a crisis can depend upon the loyalty of his colleagues. It is not in our politics as it is in our games.
FOOTNOTE:
[2] It is well known that Lord Haig regards Lord Haldane as the greatest Secretary of State for War that England ever had; he has expressed his gratitude again and again for the manner in which Lord Haldane organized the military forces of Great Britain for a war on the Continent. Lord French has said: "He got nothing but calumny and abuse; but the reward to such a man does not come in the ordinary way. I had proved the value of his great work and that is all the reward he ever wanted."
LORD RHONDDA
LORD RHONDDA OF LLANWERN (DAVID ALFRED THOMAS MACKWORTH)
First Baron, 1916. Born, in Aberdare, Wales, 1856; died, 1919. Educated with tutors, and later at Caius College, Cambridge; Scholar also, of Jesus; President South Wales Liberal Federation, 1893-97; M.P. for Merthyr, 1888-1910; for Cardiff, 1910; Food Controller, 1917-1919.
