If Richard Burden Haldane, first Viscount of Cloan, had died in 1913, a grateful Britain would have remembered him as a capable War Minister intent on army reorganization, as Lord High Chancellor and a Parliamentarian for 26 years.
But if he had died in 1915, an ungrateful Britain would have remembered him as an Internationalist who once called Germany his "spiritual home," as a public servant strongly suspected of disloyalty, closely akin to treachery.
Last week, in Auchterarder, Perthshire, Scotland, Lord Haldane died. A grateful Britain, recovered from Wartime hysteria, will Remember him as an elder statesman, an important factor in the...