The Haldane Story (continued)

Folio 112 is a copy of a letter from J. C. Foley, Chief Scientific Officer, to H. P. Mellor asking for return of the draft. This is particularly interesting because it explains the similarity of the formats of the Haldane, Mellor and Joyce histories. Mellor (1958) had access to the Haldane draft when he wrote his war history which in Chapter 22 describes the history of the RAAF Meteorological Service. Joyce had access to the Mellor history when he wrote his Metarch Papers No 5 (1993). It seems likely that the layout of the Haldane history was Warren's idea and this was adopted by Mellor and Joyce in their histories.

It is obvious that Warren made a considerable input to the draft. Haldane was a compiler and produced the first draft. Warren was a contributor and editor. It is interesting to compare the style of Warren's summary in Appendix 5 with the text in the Haldane history. There are unmistakable similarities in literary style.

There is little doubt that the draft had not been revised to Warren's satisfaction at the time of his death in 1950. The fact that a copy was found in the effects of Ralph Holmes after the latter's death suggests that Warren may have referred it to Ralph for comment on the treatment of the subject on which Warren had written in 1945 (see Appendix 5).

The Haldane history was finally published as Metarch Papers No 10 after Don Handcock had edited it. The name of Haldane has been used for convenience rather than to indicate authorship. Haldane made a considerable contribution in collecting material from a wide range of sources and producing a draft. Warren obviously determined the overall layout of the history, wrote some of the text and, in his spare time, edited the draft.

Bureau of Meteorology