Vol. 8 No. 1 (January 1998) pp. 38-40.

HALDANE--STATESMAN LAWYER PHILOSOPHER by Jean Graham Hall and
Douglas F. Martin.  Chichester, England: Barry Rose Law Publishers, 1996. 411 pp.
Cloth. 25.00 pounds. ISBN 1-872328296.

Reviewed by S. J. Stearns, Department of History, College of Staten Island, City University of New York.
 

In the annals of British politics Richard Burdon Haldane, Lord Haldane of Cloan (1856-1928), was a secondary figure. However, in his heyday, the decade before the First World War, he was one of the leading figures in the ruling Liberal party and had a shaping role in great affairs of state. His principal surviving claim to fame was that, as the Secretary of State for War from 1906 to 1911 he effectively reorganized the reserve system of the British Army. He transformed its historic local militia into the modern Territorial Army, a difficult and necessary piece of work that had long frustrated successive ministers in charge of the military. The success of this reform doubled the size of the force readily available, though it remained pitifully small by European standards. This made possible for the first time Britain's rapid intervention on the continent in the event of a major war. When, in 1914, the great test came for the army, which Haldane had prepared, it was ready to do its job. It gave a fine account of itself, contributing crucial support to the French efforts, which halted the German attack, before it reached Paris.

Haldane was an unlikely military reformer for he was a scholarly Scottish lawyer with a taste for the study of German philosophy, an interest which, however, innocent, got him into a great deal of political trouble once the war began. He had a lengthy and highly successful career at the bar and in politics, crowned by two terms as Lord Chancellor, first, as a Liberal in 1911-1915 and again, after the breakup of his party, in the first short lived Labour government in 1924.

Jean Graham Hall and Douglas Martin tell us that they came to have an interest in Haldane in his role as a legal reformer through their concern with the reorganization of the British family court system. In 1918, Haldane had chaired a parliamentary committee on the modernizing of government, writing the chapter of its final report ("the Haldane Report") dealing with proposals to reorganize the administration of justice. Like his friends, the Fabian reformers Sidney and Beatrice Webb, Haldane believed that many of the apparently political problems of modern society could be solved by carefully thought out nonpartisan administrative arrangements. Since that time, those interested in reconsidering the fundamental organization of any part of British government have continued to find the careful analysis provided by the Haldane Report of use. Hal and Martin, seeing the value and long term influence of this work, thought its author's life worthy of renewed attention.

In this they have had some company. In the seventy years since his death, Haldane's career has seemed sufficiently interesting that there have been at least a half dozen attempts to retell his story, or major parts of it, in English, and a couple of others in German, in addition to his own influential efforts to explain himself. In 1920 he had published a memoir (BEFORE THE WAR) defending the prewar foreign and military policies that he, and his friends in the imperialist wing of the Liberal party, ("the limps") Asquith and Grey, had supported and justifying his term at the War Office. At his death, he left behind an ample unfinished autobiography, published posthumously, which elaborated on those themes.

In 1915, at the climax of his political career, Haldane had been driven from office, by baseless and scurrilous attacks, part of the fierce partisan row that brought down Asquith's Liberal government,. These questioned his patriotism and accused him of being pro-German, among other reasons because of his interest in Hegel and Schopenhauer. In the years just before the war, while he was readying the army for a war against Germany, he had also been one of the more thoughtful politicians seeking to find a peaceful accommodation with Berlin. In 1912, as a German-speaking Cabinet minister, he had led an important British delegation to visit the Kaiser in what proved to be the last serious attempt at Anglo-German reconciliation before the outbreak of the war. In the hysterical atmosphere after 1914 all this was sufficient to stir up the chauvinists against him, to tarnish his reputation and drive him from office, apparently ending his political career. In retrospect the defense of Haldane's reputation in this dramatic if shameful controversy has commanded a disproportionately large share of attention in all the accounts of his career.

There are two principal general studies of Haldane, a two volume official life by General Maurice (1937) written with the cooperation of his family and heavily based on his papers, and one by Sommer (1960) more reliant on the secondary literature. Both are highly sympathetic. Works by Koss (1969) Teagarden (1976) and Spiers (1980) have focused more precisely, either on his political career or on his time as a reformer at the War Office, while Ashby and Anderson (1974) have written on his interest in education.

Hall and Martin have read the published scholarship on Haldane with some care and put to use the personal papers now deposited at the Scottish National Library. They have produced a clearly written account of the life in what amounts to an extensive reiteration and modest elaboration of the material provided by Haldane's autobiography. Their narrative of his youth and early life and his failed romantic attachments are somewhat fuller than that given by their predecessors, even though there is no unseemly speculation about the details of his private life. They have not, however, found a genuinely satisfactory way to deal with Haldane's complex and varied life. As Churchill once complained, "this pudding has not theme."

The question, which challenges every biography intended for the general reader -- "what kind of a person is this? What makes him tick?" -- does not drive this work. The fault may be Haldane's, to some degree, for he was well known in his day for being highly elusive and difficult to explain. He hid behind a bluff and jolly facade, a subtle man who preferred to work quietly backstage to achieve his political ends. His enemies, who understood that much about him, saw him as a master of partisan political intrigue, but even his friends were often baffled by his intellectual complexities. These biographers have not found a coherent approach to their subject. Unable to decide between a fundamentally chronological structure and a thematic organizing scheme for their story, they fall between them. This involves some skipping about in time and inevitable repetition. Their narrative of Haldane's political career and of his role at the War Office, adds nothing to the older accounts and suffers by comparison with the sharply focused scholarship of Koss and Spiers who have given very careful and full attention respectively to Haldane's role in Liberal party politics, the fall of Asquith's war ministry, and the intricate prewar struggle over the reorganization of the Army.

Hall and Martin devote three of their nineteen chapters to Haldane's career in the law, where they have a much clearer field for doing some original work of independent value. None of their predecessors took the time or the trouble to investigate these matters in any detail. Haldane's practice took in a tangle of complicated legal questions raised by the need to adjudicate disputes under the co-existing but sharply differing legal systems of the many distinct societies of the world's largest empire. This work however does not add substantially to what little Haldane himself wrote on the subject, which must be accounted a disappointment. Equally surprisingly, it does not seize the opportunity to evaluate in any significant way Haldane's later reputation for having influenced the reform of legal administration, a matter about which the authors are presumably well informed.

Like all their predecessors, while they acknowledge Haldane's lifelong interest in German idealist philosophy the effort to explain that work seems to have been too daunting. They resort to some extensive quotation of secondary authorities by way of summary to discharge their implicit obligation to discuss Haldane's efforts to introduce that thought to the intelligent reading public in Britain. As Haldane was, for a time, an important interpreter of Hegel to the English speaking world and one of the

co-translator's of a widely used edition of Schopenhauer's WORLD AS WILL AND IDEA it seems a pity that his contribution should have been treated so casually.

This study of Haldane will serve as a satisfactory introduction for the curious general reader but scholars of British legal history at the height of the Edwardian Empire may well think that there is more of interest to be said. A full-scale modern biography of the whole life that will be useful to scholars and of interest to serious readers has not yet been written.

 

REFERENCES
 

Ashby, Eric and Mary Anderson. 1974. PORTRAIT OF HALDANE AT WORK ON EDUCATION. Hamden, CT: Archon Books.

Koss, Stephen E. 1969. LORD HALDANE: SCAPEGOAT FOR LIBERALISM. New York: Columbia University Press.

Maurice, Frederick, Sir. 1937 [1970]. HALDANE, 1856-1915; THE LIFE OF VISCOUNT HALDANE OF CLOAN. 1970 reprint of the 1937 edition. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press.

Sommer, Dudley. 1960. HALDANE OF CLOAN: HIS LIFE AND TIMES. London: G. Allen & Unwin.

Spiers, Edward M. 1980. HALDANE, AN ARMY REFORMER. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.

Teagarden, Ernest M. 1976. HALDANE AT THE WAR OFFICE: A STUDY IN ORGANIZATION AND MANAGEMENT. New York: Gordon Press.

 
Vol. 8 No. 1 (January 1998) pp. 38-40.

HALDANE--STATESMAN LAWYER PHILOSOPHER by Jean Graham Hall and Douglas F. Martin. Chichester, England: Barry Rose Law Publishers, 1996. 411 pp. Cloth. 25.00 pounds. ISBN 1-872328296.

Reviewed by S. J. Stearns, Department of History, College of Staten Island, City University of New York.
 

In the annals of British politics Richard Burdon Haldane, Lord Haldane of Cloan (1856-1928), was a secondary figure. However, in his heyday, the decade before the First World War, he was one of the leading figures in the ruling Liberal party and had a shaping role in great affairs of state. His principal surviving claim to fame was that, as the Secretary of State for War from 1906 to 1911 he effectively reorganized the reserve system of the British Army. He transformed its historic local militia into the modern Territorial Army, a difficult and necessary piece of work that had long frustrated successive ministers in charge of the military. The success of this reform doubled the size of the force readily available, though it remained pitifully small by European standards. This made possible for the first time Britain's rapid intervention on the continent in the event of a major war. When, in 1914, the great test came for the army, which Haldane had prepared, it was ready to do its job. It gave a fine account of itself, contributing crucial support to the French efforts, which halted the German attack, before it reached Paris.

Haldane was an unlikely military reformer for he was a scholarly Scottish lawyer with a taste for the study of German philosophy, an interest which, however, innocent, got him into a great deal of political trouble once the war began. He had a lengthy and highly successful career at the bar and in politics, crowned by two terms as Lord Chancellor, first, as a Liberal in 1911-1915 and again, after the breakup of his party, in the first short lived Labour government in 1924.

Jean Graham Hall and Douglas Martin tell us that they came to have an interest in Haldane in his role as a legal reformer through their concern with the reorganization of the British family court system. In 1918, Haldane had chaired a parliamentary committee on the modernizing of government, writing the chapter of its final report ("the Haldane Report") dealing with proposals to reorganize the administration of justice. Like his friends, the Fabian reformers Sidney and Beatrice Webb, Haldane believed that many of the apparently political problems of modern society could be solved by carefully thought out nonpartisan administrative arrangements. Since that time, those interested in reconsidering the fundamental organization of any part of British government have continued to find the careful analysis provided by the Haldane Report of use. Hal and Martin, seeing the value and long term influence of this work, thought its author's life worthy of renewed attention.

In this they have had some company. In the seventy years since his death, Haldane's career has seemed sufficiently interesting that there have been at least a half dozen attempts to retell his story, or major parts of it, in English, and a couple of others in German, in addition to his own influential efforts to explain himself. In 1920 he had published a memoir (BEFORE THE WAR) defending the prewar foreign and military policies that he, and his friends in the imperialist wing of the Liberal party, ("the limps") Asquith and Grey, had supported and justifying his term at the War Office. At his death, he left behind an ample unfinished autobiography, published posthumously, which elaborated on those themes.

In 1915, at the climax of his political career, Haldane had been driven from office, by baseless and scurrilous attacks, part of the fierce partisan row that brought down Asquith's Liberal government,. These questioned his patriotism and accused him of being pro-German, among other reasons because of his interest in Hegel and Schopenhauer. In the years just before the war, while he was readying the army for a war against Germany, he had also been one of the more thoughtful politicians seeking to find a peaceful accommodation with Berlin. In 1912, as a German-speaking Cabinet minister, he had led an important British delegation to visit the Kaiser in what proved to be the last serious attempt at Anglo-German reconciliation before the outbreak of the war. In the hysterical atmosphere after 1914 all this was sufficient to stir up the chauvinists against him, to tarnish his reputation and drive him from office, apparently ending his political career. In retrospect the defense of Haldane's reputation in this dramatic if shameful controversy has commanded a disproportionately large share of attention in all the accounts of his career.

There are two principal general studies of Haldane, a two volume official life by General Maurice (1937) written with the cooperation of his family and heavily based on his papers, and one by Sommer (1960) more reliant on the secondary literature. Both are highly sympathetic. Works by Koss (1969) Teagarden (1976) and Spiers (1980) have focused more precisely, either on his political career or on his time as a reformer at the War Office, while Ashby and Anderson (1974) have written on his interest in education.

Hall and Martin have read the published scholarship on Haldane with some care and put to use the personal papers now deposited at the Scottish National Library. They have produced a clearly written account of the life in what amounts to an extensive reiteration and modest elaboration of the material provided by Haldane's autobiography. Their narrative of his youth and early life and his failed romantic attachments are somewhat fuller than that given by their predecessors, even though there is no unseemly speculation about the details of his private life. They have not, however, found a genuinely satisfactory way to deal with Haldane's complex and varied life. As Churchill once complained, "this pudding has not theme."

The question, which challenges every biography intended for the general reader -- "what kind of a person is this? What makes him tick?" -- does not drive this work. The fault may be Haldane's, to some degree, for he was well known in his day for being highly elusive and difficult to explain. He hid behind a bluff and jolly facade, a subtle man who preferred to work quietly backstage to achieve his political ends. His enemies, who understood that much about him, saw him as a master of partisan political intrigue, but even his friends were often baffled by his intellectual complexities. These biographers have not found a coherent approach to their subject. Unable to decide between a fundamentally chronological structure and a thematic organizing scheme for their story, they fall between them. This involves some skipping about in time and inevitable repetition. Their narrative of Haldane's political career and of his role at the War Office, adds nothing to the older accounts and suffers by comparison with the sharply focused scholarship of Koss and Spiers who have given very careful and full attention respectively to Haldane's role in Liberal party politics, the fall of Asquith's war ministry, and the intricate prewar struggle over the reorganization of the Army.

Hall and Martin devote three of their nineteen chapters to Haldane's career in the law, where they have a much clearer field for doing some original work of independent value. None of their predecessors took the time or the trouble to investigate these matters in any detail. Haldane's practice took in a tangle of complicated legal questions raised by the need to adjudicate disputes under the co-existing but sharply differing legal systems of the many distinct societies of the world's largest empire. This work however does not add substantially to what little Haldane himself wrote on the subject, which must be accounted a disappointment. Equally surprisingly, it does not seize the opportunity to evaluate in any significant way Haldane's later reputation for having influenced the reform of legal administration, a matter about which the authors are presumably well informed.

Like all their predecessors, while they acknowledge Haldane's lifelong interest in German idealist philosophy the effort to explain that work seems to have been too daunting. They resort to some extensive quotation of secondary authorities by way of summary to discharge their implicit obligation to discuss Haldane's efforts to introduce that thought to the intelligent reading public in Britain. As Haldane was, for a time, an important interpreter of Hegel to the English speaking world and one of the co-translator's of a widely used edition of Schopenhauer's WORLD AS WILL AND IDEA it seems a pity that his contribution should have been treated so casually.

This study of Haldane will serve as a satisfactory introduction for the curious general reader but scholars of British legal history at the height of the Edwardian Empire may well think that there is more of interest to be said. A full-scale modern biography of the whole life that will be useful to scholars and of interest to serious readers has not yet been written.
 

REFERENCES
Ashby, Eric and Mary Anderson. 1974. PORTRAIT OF HALDANE AT WORK ON EDUCATION. Hamden, CT: Archon Books.

Koss, Stephen E. 1969. LORD HALDANE: SCAPEGOAT FOR LIBERALISM. New York: Columbia University Press.

Maurice, Frederick, Sir. 1937 [1970]. HALDANE, 1856-1915; THE LIFE OF VISCOUNT HALDANE OF CLOAN. 1970 reprint of the 1937 edition. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press.

Sommer, Dudley. 1960. HALDANE OF CLOAN: HIS LIFE AND TIMES. London: G. Allen & Unwin.

Spiers, Edward M. 1980. HALDANE, AN ARMY REFORMER. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.

Teagarden, Ernest M. 1976. HALDANE AT THE WAR OFFICE: A STUDY IN ORGANIZATION AND MANAGEMENT. New York: Gordon Press.


Copyright 1998