Great Scot
Sir: I am surprised no one has taken to task Mr Barklam (Letters, 30 August) for not only perpetuating the canard that Haldane remarked that Germany was his spiritual home, but embellishing it by saying that the remark was made 'in the midst of the tension before 1914'. This is one of those historical myths which usually receive short shrift in your columns. Mr R. F. V. Heuston, in his Lives of the Lord Chan- cellors, says: 'The true origin of this affair seems to have been a dinner party given by Mrs Humphrey Ward to a number of German professors in April 1913. In the after-glow of dinner, Haldane remarked to one Professor Oncken that "Lotze's class- room was my spiritual home". (Oncken had also been a pupil of Lotze)'.
This certainly did not antagonise the Tories at the time; after all, a rapprochetnent with Germany had been the pet scheme of several Tories over the previous twenty years. Nor does it provide any justification for the newspaper campaign against Haldane, which hardly differs from the scurrilous campaigns of Lord Alfred Douglas against Churchill, or of Pemberton Billing against other Liberals. other
examples of what Asquith was later to call 'one of those fanatical and malignant out- cries which from time to time disgrace ou national character'. Mr Barklam's advocae deserves a better cause.
D.C. Ro.,
87 Avenue Road, St. John's Wood, tsiw8
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