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.