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Page 30
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.
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