hire, 1885-1911; Sec'y for War, 1905-12;
Rector of Edinburgh Univ.; Chancellor, Univ. of Bristol; Author of
various philosophical works.

[Illustration: RT. HON. RICHARD BURDON HALDANE]

CHAPTER X

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