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.
[Illustration: LORD RHONDDA]