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.