RARE! “Lord Chancellor" Sir Richard Haldane Hand Signed Note Dated 1914

Description: Up for auction a RARE! "1st Viscount" Richard Haldane Hand Signed Note on embossed Letterhead From The House of Lords Dated 1914. ES-4790E Richard Burdon Haldane, 1st Viscount Haldane, KT, OM, PC, KC, FRS, FSA, FBA (/ˈhɔːldeɪn/; 30 July 1856 – 19 August 1928) was an influential British Liberal Imperialist and later Labour politician, lawyer and philosopher. He was Secretary of State for War between 1905 and 1912 during which time the "Haldane Reforms" of the British Army were implemented. Raised to the peerage as Viscount Haldane in 1911, he was Lord Chancellor between 1912 and 1915, when he was forced to resign because of false allegations of German sympathies. He later joined the Labour Party and once again served as Lord Chancellor in 1924 in the first ever Labour administration. Apart from his legal and political careers, Haldane was also an influential writer on philosophy, in recognition of which he was elected a Fellow of the British Academy in 1914. Haldane was born at 17 Charlotte Square, Edinburgh, the son of Robert Haldane and his wife Mary Elizabeth, daughter of Richard Burdon-Sanderson. He was the grandson of the Scottish evangelist James Alexander Haldane, the brother of respiratory physiologist John Scott Haldane, Sir William Haldane and author Elizabeth Haldane, and the uncle of J. B. S. Haldane and Naomi Mitchison. He received his first education at the Edinburgh Academy, and then at the University of Göttingen. He gained a first and MA at University of Edinburgh where he received first-class honours in Philosophy and as Gray scholar and Ferguson scholar in philosophy of the four Scottish Universities. After studying law in London, he was called to the bar by Lincoln's Inn, in 1879, and became a successful lawyer. He was taken on at 5 New Square Chambers by Lord Davey in 1882 as the junior. Haldane's practice was a specialism in conveyancing; a particular skill for pleadings at appeal and tribunal cases, bringing cases to the privy council and house of Lords. By 1890 he had become a Queen's Counsel. By 1905 he was earning £20,000 per annum at the Bar[3] (equivalent to $2,100,000 in 2018). He became a bencher at Lincoln's Inn in 1893. Amongst his early friends was Edmund Gosse, the scholarly librarian at the inn's law library, whose help made Haldane well known for being fully prepared in court and parliamentary briefs. Haldane was a deep thinker, an unusual breed: a philosopher-politician. During his stay at Göttingen he expanded an interest in the German philosophers, Schopenauer and Hegel. He had refused a place at Balliol, but in nodding respect for the Master and philosopher, T H Green, he dedicated his Schopenauer translation The World as Will and Idea which he carried through with a friend, Peter Hume Brown, the Scottish historian. As early as January 1906 Haldane was persuaded by fellow Liberal Imperialist Edward Grey to begin planning for a Continental war in support of the French against the Germans.[b] However, Haldane's first estimates reduced the Army by 16,600 men and reduced expenditure by £2.6m to £28 million, as the Liberals had been elected on a platform of retrenchment. By 1914 Britain spent 3.4% of national income on defence, little more in absolute terms than Austria-Hungary's 6.1%. Army expenditure was determined according to a formula devised by the Esher Committee. In 1900, during the Boer War, army expenditure was £86.8m, by 1910 (a low point, after four years of cuts under the Liberals) it had dropped to £27.6m and by 1914 it had risen back to £29.4m. In March 1914 effective expenditure on the Army, after allowing for increased pensions and £1m set aside for military aviation, was still less than in 1907-8, and £2m less than in 1905-6 (despite a 20% rise in prices since then)In October 1907 Haldane was intimately involved with the negotiations at Windsor with Kaiser Wilhelm. The Germanophile and linguist was thrilled to be summoned at 1 am to talk with the Emperor on arms reduction principles over whisky. But the import was the Baghdad-Berlin railway which Germany was hoping to construct with British approval. A fluent German-speaker, Haldane was lulled into a false sense of security believing 'like a bear with a sore head' that he had won a great deal. Another such conference took place at Balmoral in September 1909. The Kaiser arrogantly insisted that only the King was of equal rank. Despite the budgetary constraints, Haldane implemented a wide-ranging set of reforms of the Army, aimed at preparing the army for an Imperial war but with the more likely (and secret) task of a European war. The main element of this was the establishment of the British Expeditionary Force of six infantry divisions and one cavalry division. The Official Historian Brigadier Edmonds later wrote that "in every respect the Expeditionary Force of 1914 was incomparably the best trained, best organised and best equipped British Army ever to leave these shores"

Price: 499.99 USD

Location: Fort Lauderdale, Florida

End Time: 2025-01-06T12:49:14.000Z

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