Historical Dictionary of British Intelligence

HALL, ADMIRAL SIR REGINALD• 229

In March 1916 Haldane was given an intelligence post in Edinburgh,

and then in October he was transferred with the Second Black Watch

to Mesopotamia. Here he was wounded again, this time by an acci-

dental explosion on a temporary Royal Flying Corps airdrome, and

he was taken by hospital ship to India, where he spent the remainder

of the war lecturing Indian troops at the Bombing School at Mhow

in Central Provinces.

Haldane made three visits to the Spanish Civil War and advised

the defenders of Madrid on how to resist gas attacks and deal with

Mills grenades. He also fought in the war, where the GRU defector

Allan Footerecalled:

For a short period he served with the Brigade as a private soldier, standing

in a trench brandishing a tiny, snub-nosed revolver and shouting defiance

at the advancing Franco infantry. Luckily for science, we managed to repel

the rebel attack and the Professor was spared for his further contributions

to world knowledge.

The journalist Douglas Hyde, an eyewitness at theDaily Worker’s

editorial boards, presided over by Haldane, described him as ‘‘taking

little part in the discussion and absent-mindedly doodling in Greek

as the Dean of Canterbury held forth at length.’’ In fact Haldane was

far from an eccentric boffin, and his ideological commitment to the

party was total, to the extent of suppressing any adverse comment

when Stalin began to interfere with scientific progress made in his

field of genetics by persecuting Soviet colleagues who happened to

be his friends. After the war Haldane took up a teaching post at Uni-

versity College, London, became active in the Association of Scien-

tific Workers, and started to make regular contributions to theDaily

Worker, establishing a reputation as a cantankerous, blunt-speaking,

but brilliant exponent of modern science. In 1956, following the Suez

adventure, Haldane renounced his British citizenship and went to live

in India, where he died before being identified invenonaasintel-

ligensia.

HALL, ADMIRAL SIR REGINALD.Thedirector of naval intelli-
gence(DNI) throughout World War I (and son of the first DNI), Reg-
inald ‘‘Blinker’’ Hall was later elected a Conservative MP for
Liverpool and then Eastbourne, and when he died in 1943 was active
in the Home Guard. Widely credited with masterminding the war-