HALDANE AND GERMANY

Andrew Roberts, in his review of John Campbell’s biography of Haldane (July/ August), is right to criticise Asquith for showing poor judgment in 1915-16, but his animus against him is excessive. Other prime ministers have likewise sacked their closest allies to protect their position, notably Harold Macmillan on the Night of the Long Knives.

Yet Macmillan did not have to endure the vitriol of the yellow press as the Liberals did or as even more recently politicians have had to do at the hands of a foreign owner (the irony in this!) in the form of Rupert Murdoch. The fury whipped up against Germans had its effect on my grandparents because they had a German name, though their connection with Germany had been well over a century earlier and they had hitherto been respected members of their community.

A point that Andrew Roberts misses is that before World War I Germany was held in higher regard than France in Britain, according to Bertrand Russell speaking in 1952. He presumably was expressing the views of liberals and Cambridge academics. He added that the Kaiser’s government was not so terribly bad as far as Germans were concerned and Bismarck was dismissed as an unthreatening peasant. In that context Haldane’s Germanic enthusiasms were unremarkable.

Dr Selby Whittingham

london sw5