Obituaries | Nature

ABSTRACT IN Viscount Haldane the Empire has lost one of its foremost citizens, a man to whose abilities and devotion it owes an incalculable debt. The work for which history will chiefly

remember him was done in fields that seem to occupy opposite pole's of practical activity—war and law. Yet the greatness of his achievements in regions so diverse is not to be taken

merely as a proof of versatility—which is often shallow as well as brilliant—or of restless energies ever seeking new worlds to conquer. It was due rather to qualities central and typical in

him: namely, his power to see the vital needs of the community steadily and as a whole, his profound conviction that those needs can be met only by unremitting intellectual labour, and his

extraordinary capacity for getting broad ideas translated into administrative detail. The immense value of his services at the War Office during the critically important period from 1906 to

1912 is now universally recognised, and is his most obvious claim upon the gratitude of posterity. But his work, since 1918, as a member of the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council may

prove, in the end, to have scarcely less importance. For the War, which left nothing unchanged, has transformed the British Empire we know into a Commonwealth of Sovereign Nations, and so

created problems, legal and constitutional, of the utmost gravity and delicacy. It is characteristic of Lord Haldane's profound practical intelligence that he appreciated at once the

emergence and significance of the new order, and of his patriotism that, ignoring medical warnings, he spent the whole reserve of his physical strength in seeking to guide upon sound lines

the most amazing and possibly the most hopeful political experiment the world has seen. ARTICLE PDF ENJOYING OUR LATEST CONTENT? LOGIN OR CREATE AN ACCOUNT TO CONTINUE * Get immediate access

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ORCiD Authors * T. P. NUNN View author publications You can also search for this author inPubMed Google Scholar RIGHTS AND PERMISSIONS Reprints and permissions ABOUT THIS ARTICLE CITE THIS

ARTICLE NUNN, T. Obituaries. _Nature_ 122, 410–412 (1928). https://doi.org/10.1038/122410a0 Download citation * Issue Date: 15 September 1928 * DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/122410a0 SHARE

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