Haldane of Cloan, Richard Burdon Haldane, Viscount definition of Haldane of Cloan, Richard Burdon Haldane, Viscount in the Free Online Encyclopedia.

Haldane of Cloan, Richard Burdon Haldane, Viscount, 1856–1928, British statesman. He entered (1885) the House of Commons as a Liberal. As war secretary (1905–12) he effected drastic army reforms, creating a British expeditionary force, an imperial general staff, an officers training corps, and the territorial army. He was created a peer in 1911. On a diplomatic mission to Germany (1912), he rejected a proposal of British neutrality in any war into which Germany might be drawn. His tenure of office as lord chancellor (1912–15) ended after the outbreak of World War I, when popular clamor mistakenly attacked him as pro-German. In Ramsay MacDonald MacDonald, Ramsay (James Ramsay McDonald), 1866–1937, British statesman, b. Scotland. The illegitimate son of a servant, he went as a young man to London, where he joined the Social Democratic Federation (1885) and the Fabian Society (1886).
..... Click the link for more information. 's first short Labour ministry (1924) he was again lord chancellor. He was first chancellor of the Univ. of Bristol and was elected lord rector of Edinburgh. He wrote a number of philosophical works, including Pathway to Reality (1903), Reign of Relativity (1921), The Philosophy of Humanism (1922), and Selected Addresses and Essays (1928, repr. 1970). He also wrote an autobiography (1929).

Bibliography

See study by E. Ashby (1974).