out letters by enclosing them in the uncut pages of books. I could not, of
course, explain the method in the presence of the warder, so I practised it ?rst
by giving Ottoline the Proceedings of the London Mathematical Society, and telling her
that it was more interesting than it seemed. Before I invented this device, I
found another by which I could incorporate love-letters to Colette into letters
which were read by the Governor of the prison. I professed to be reading
French Revolutionary Memoirs, and to have discovered letters from the
Girondin Buzot to Madame Roland. I concocted letters in French, saying that I
had copied them out of a book. His circumstances were su?ciently similar to
my own to make it possible to give verisimilitude to these letters. In any case,
I suspect that the Governor did not know French, but would not confess
ignorance.
the first war 243The prison was full of Germans, some of them very intelligent. When I
once published a review of a book about Kant, several of them came up to me
and argued warmly about my interpretation of that philosopher. During part
of my time, Litvinov was in the same prison, but I was not allowed any
opportunity of speaking to him, though I used to see him in the distance.
Some of my moods in prison are illustrated by the following extracts from
letters to my brother, all of which had to be such as to be passed by the
Governor of the prison:
(May 6, 1918) . . . ‘Life here is just like life on an Ocean Liner; one is cooped
up with a number of average human beings, unable to escape except into one’s
own state-room. I see no sign that they are worse than the average, except that
they probably have less will-power, if one can judge by their faces, which is
all I have to go by. That applies to debtors chie?y. The only real hardship of
life here is not seeing one’s friends. It was a great delight seeing you the other
day. Next time you come, I hope you will bring two others – I think you and
Elizabeth both have the list. I am anxious to see as much of my friends as
possible. You seemed to think I should grow indi?erent on that point but I
am certain you were wrong. Seeing the people I am fond of is not a thing
I should grow indi?erent to, though thinking of them is a great satisfaction. I
?nd it comforting to go over in my mind all sorts of occasions when things
have been to my liking.
‘Impatience and lack of tobacco do not as yet trouble me as much as I
expected, but no doubt they will later. The holiday from responsibility
is really delightful, so delightful that it almost outweighs everything else.
Here I have not a care in the world: the rest to nerves and will is heavenly.
One is free from the torturing question: What more might I be doing? Is
there any e?ective action that I haven’t thought of? Have I a right to let the
whole thing go and return to philosophy? Here, I have to let the whole thing
go, which is far more restful than choosing to let it go and doubting if one’s
choice is justi?ed. Prison has some of the advantages of the Catholic
Church...’
(May 27, 1918) . . . ‘Tell Lady Ottoline I have been reading the two books on
the Amazon: Tomlinson I loved; Bates bores me while I am reading him, but
leaves pictures in my mind which I am glad of afterwards. Tomlinson owes
much to Heart of Darkness. The contrast with Bates is remarkable: one sees how
our generation, in comparison, is a little mad, because it has allowed itself
glimpses of the truth, and the truth is spectral, insane, ghastly: the more men
see of it, the less mental health they retain. The Victorians (dear souls) were
sane and successful because they never came anywhere near truth. But for my
part I would rather be mad with truth than sane with lies...’
the autobiography of bertrand russell 244(June 10, 1918) . . . ‘Being here in these conditions is not as disagreeable as
the time I spent as attaché at the Paris Embassy, and not in the same world of
horror as the year and a half I spent at a crammer’s. The young men there
were almost all going into the Army or the Church, so they were at a much
lower moral level than the average...
(July 8, 1918) . . . ‘I am not fretting at all, on the contrary. At ?rst I thought a
good deal about my own concerns, but not (I think) more than was reason-
able; now I hardly ever think about them, as I have done all I can. I read a great
deal, and think about philosophy quite fruitfully. It is odd and irrational, but
the fact is my spirits depend on the military situation as much as anything:
when the Allies do well I feel cheerful, when they do badly, I worry over all
sorts of things that seem quite remote from the War...’
(July 22, 1918) . . . ‘I have been reading about Mirabeau. His death is amus-
ing. As he was dying he said “Ah! si j’eusse vécu, que j’eusse donné de chagrin à ce Pitt!”
which I prefer to Pitt’s words (except in Dizzy’s version). They were not
however quite the last words Mirabeau uttered. He went on: “Il ne reste plus
qu’une chose à faire: c’est de se parfumer, de se couronner de ?eurs et de s’environner de musique,
a?n d’entrer agréablement dans ce sommeil dont on ne se réveille plus. Legrain, qu’on se prépare à
me raser, à faire ma toilette toute entière.” Then, turning to a friend who was sob-
bing, “Eh bien! êtes-vous content, mon cher connaisseur en belles morts?” At last, hearing
some guns ?red, “Sont-ce déjà les funérailles d’Achille?” After that, apparently, he
held his tongue, thinking, I suppose, that any further remark would be an
anticlimax. He illustrates the thesis I was maintaining to you last Wednesday,
that all unusual energy is inspired by an unusual degree of vanity. There is
just one other motive: love of power. Philip II of Spain and Sidney Webb of
Grosvenor Road are not remarkable for vanity.’
There was only one thing that made me mind being in prison, and that was
connected with Colette. Exactly a year after I had fallen in love with her, she
fell in love with someone else, though she did not wish it to make any
di?erence in her relations with me. I, however, was bitterly jealous.
13
I had the
worst opinion of him, not wholly without reason. We had violent quarrels,
and things were never again quite the same between us. While I was in prison,
I was tormented by jealousy the whole time, and driven wild by the sense of
impotence. I did not think myself justi?ed in feeling jealousy, which I
regarded as an abominable emotion, but none the less it consumed me. When
I ?rst had occasion to feel it, it kept me awake almost the whole of every night
for a fortnight, and at the end I only got sleep by getting a doctor to prescribe
sleeping-draughts. I recognise now that the emotion was wholly foolish, and
that Colette’s feeling for me was su?ciently serious to persist through any
the first war 245number of minor a?airs. But I suspect that the philosophical attitude which I
am now able to maintain in such matters is due less to philosophy than to
physiological decay. The fact was, of course, that she was very young, and
could not live continually in the atmosphere of high seriousness in which I
lived in those days. But although I know this now, I allowed jealousy to lead
me to denounce her with great violence, with the natural result that her
feelings towards me were considerably chilled. We remained lovers until
1920, but we never recaptured the perfection of the ?rst year.
I came out of prison in September 1918, when it was already clear that the
War was ending. During the last weeks, in common with most other people, I
based my hopes upon Woodrow Wilson. The end of the War was so swift and
dramatic that no one had time to adjust feelings to changed circumstances. I
learned on the morning of November 11th, a few hours in advance of the
general public, that the Armistice was coming. I went out into the street, and
told a Belgian soldier, who said: ‘Tiens, c’est chic!’ I went into a tobacconist’s and
told the lady who served me. ‘I am glad of that’, she said, ‘because now we
shall be able to get rid of the interned Germans.’ At eleven o’clock, when the
Armistice was announced, I was in Tottenham Court Road. Within two min-
utes everybody in all the shops and o?ces had come into the street. They
commandeered the buses, and made them go where they liked. I saw a man
and woman, complete strangers to each other, meet in the middle of the road
and kiss as they passed.
Late into the night I stayed alone in the streets, watching the temper of the
crowd, as I had done in the August days four years before. The crowd was
frivolous still, and had learned nothing during the period of horror, except to
snatch at pleasure more recklessly than before. I felt strangely solitary amid
the rejoicings, like a ghost dropped by accident from some other planet. True,
I rejoiced also, but I could ?nd nothing in common between my rejoicing
and that of the crowd. Throughout my life I have longed to feel that oneness
with large bodies of human beings that is experienced by the members of
enthusiastic crowds. The longing has often been strong enough to lead me
into self-deception. I have imagined myself in turn a Liberal, a Socialist, or a
Paci?st, but I have never been any of these things, in any profound sense.
Always the sceptical intellect, when I have most wished it silent, has whis-
pered doubts to me, has cut me o? from the facile enthusiasms of others, and
has transported me into a desolate solitude. During the War, while I worked
with Quakers, non-resisters, and socialists, while I was willing to accept the
unpopularity and the inconvenience belonging to unpopular opinions, I
would tell the Quakers that I thought many wars in history had been justi?ed,
and the socialists that I dreaded the tyranny of the State. They would look
askance at me, and while continuing to accept my help would feel that I was
not one of them. Underlying all occupations and all pleasures I have felt since
the autobiography of bertrand russell 246early youth the pain of solitude. I have escaped it most nearly in moments of
love, yet even there, on re?ection, I have found that the escape depended
partly upon illusion.
14
I have known no woman to whom the claims of
intellect were as absolute as they are to me, and wherever intellect intervened,
I have found that the sympathy I sought in love was apt to fail. What Spinoza
calls ‘the intellectual love of God’ has seemed to me the best thing to live by,
but I have not had even the somewhat abstract God that Spinoza allowed
himself to whom to attach my intellectual love. I have loved a ghost, and in
loving a ghost my inmost self has itself become spectral. I have therefore
buried it deeper and deeper beneath layers of cheerfulness, a?ection, and joy
of life. But my most profound feelings have remained always solitary and have
found in human things no companionship. The sea, the stars, the night wind
in waste places, mean more to me than even the human beings I love best,
and I am conscious that human a?ection is to me at bottom an attempt to
escape from the vain search for God.
The War of 1914–18 changed everything for me. I ceased to be academic
and took to writing a new kind of books. I changed my whole conception of
human nature. I became for the ?rst time deeply convinced that Puritanism
does not make for human happiness. Through the spectacle of death I
acquired a new love for what is living. I became convinced that most human
beings are possessed by a profound unhappiness venting itself in destructive
rages, and that only through the di?usion of instinctive joy can a good world
be brought into being. I saw that reformers and reactionaries alike in our
present world have become distorted by cruelties. I grew suspicious of all
purposes demanding stern discipline. Being in opposition to the whole pur-
pose of the community, and ?nding all the everyday virtues used as means
for the slaughter of Germans, I experienced great di?culty in not becoming a
complete Antinomian. But I was saved from this by the profound compassion
which I felt for the sorrows of the world. I lost old friends and made new
ones. I came to know some few people whom I could deeply admire, ?rst
among whom I should place E. D. Morel. I got to know him in the ?rst days of
the War, and saw him frequently until he and I were in prison. He had single-
minded devotion to the truthful presentation of facts. Having begun by
exposing the iniquities of the Belgians in the Congo, he had di?culty in
accepting the myth of ‘gallant little Belgium’. Having studied minutely the
diplomacy of the French and Sir Edward Grey in regard to Morocco, he could
not view the Germans as the sole sinners. With untiring energy and immense
ability in the face of all the obstacles of propaganda and censorship, he did
what he could to enlighten the British nation as to the true purposes for
which the Government was driving the young men to the shambles. More
than any other opponent of the War, he was attacked by politicians and the
press, and of those who had heard his name ninety-nine per cent believed
the first war 247him to be in the pay of the Kaiser. At last he was sent to prison for the purely
technical o?ence of having employed Miss Sidgwick, instead of the post, for
the purpose of sending a letter and some documents to Romain Rolland. He
was not, like me, in the ?rst division, and he su?ered an injury to his health
from which he never recovered. In spite of all this, his courage never failed. He
often stayed up late at night to comfort Ramsay MacDonald, who frequently
got ‘cold feet’, but when MacDonald came to form a government, he could
not think of including anyone so tainted with pro-Germanism as Morel.
Morel felt his ingratitude deeply, and shortly afterwards died of heart disease,
acquired from the hardships of prison life.
There were some among the Quakers whom I admired very greatly, in
spite of a very di?erent outlook. I might take as typical of these the treasurer
of the No Conscription Fellowship, Mr Grubb. He was, when I ?rst knew
him, a man of seventy, very quiet, very averse from publicity, and very
immovable. He took what came without any visible sign of emotion. He
acted on behalf of the young men in prison with a complete absence of
even the faintest trace of self-seeking. When he and a number of others were
being prosecuted for a paci?st publication, my brother was in court listening
to his cross-examination. My brother, though not a paci?st, was impressed
by the man’s character and integrity. He was sitting next to Matthews, the
Public Prosecutor, who was a friend of his. When the Public Prosecutor sat
down at the end of his cross-examination of Mr Grubb, my brother whis-
pered to him: ‘Really, Matthews, the role of Torquemada does not suit
you!’ My brother’s remark so angered Matthews that he would never speak to
him again.
One of the most curious incidents of the War, so far as I was concerned,
was a summons to the War O?ce to be kindly reasoned with. Several Red
Tabs with the most charming manners and the most friendly attitude,
besought me to acquire a sense of humour, for they held that no one with a
sense of humour would give utterance to unpopular opinions. They failed,
however, and afterwards I regretted that I had not replied that I held my sides
with laughter every morning as I read the casualty ?gures.
When the War was over, I saw that all I had done had been totally useless
except to myself. I had not saved a single life or shortened the War by a
minute. I had not succeeded in doing anything to diminish the bitterness
which caused the Treaty of Versailles. But at any rate I had not been an
accomplice in the crime of all the belligerent nations, and for myself I had
acquired a new philosophy and a new youth. I had got rid of the don and the
Puritan. I had learned an understanding of instinctive processes which I had
not possessed before, and I had acquired a certain poise from having stood so
long alone. In the days of the Armistice men had high hopes of Wilson. Other
men found their inspiration in Bolshevik Russia. But when I found that
the autobiography of bertrand russell 248neither of these sources of optimism was available for me, I was nevertheless
able not to despair. It is my deliberate expectation that the worst is to come,
15
but I do not on that account cease to believe that men and women will
ultimately learn the simple secret of instinctive joy.
LETTERS
From Norbert Wiener
Bühlstr. 28
G?ttingen
Germany
[c. June or July, 1914]
My dear Mr Russell
At present I am studying here in G?ttingen, following your advice. I am
hearing a course on the Theory of Groups with Landau, a course on Di?eren-
tial Equations with Hilbert (I know it has precious little to do with Philosophy
but I wanted to hear Hilbert), and three courses with Husserl, one on Kant’s
ethical writings, one on the principles of Ethics, and the seminary on Phe-
nomenology. I must confess that the intellectual contortions through which
one must go before one ?nds oneself in the true Phenomenological attitude
are utterly beyond me. The applications of Phenomenology to Mathematics,
and the claims of Husserl that no adequate account can be given of the
foundations of Mathematics without starting out from Phenomenology seem
to me absurd.
Symbolic logic stands in little favour in G?ttingen. As usual, the Mathema-
ticians will have nothing to do with anything so philosophical as logic, while
the philosophers will have nothing to do with anything so mathematical as
symbols. For this reason, I have not done much original work this term: it is
disheartening to try to do original work where you know that not a person
with whom you talk about it will understand a word you say.
During the P?ngsten holidays, I called on Frege up at Brunnshaupten in
Mecklenburg, where he spends his holidays. I had several interesting talks
with him about your work.
A topic which has interested me of late is the question whether one can
obtain a simpler set of postulates for Geometry by taking the convex solid
& relations between convex solids as inde?nable, and de?ning points as
you de?ne instants. I have obtained ?ve or six sets of de?nitions of the funda-
mental Geometrical concepts in this manner, but I am utterly at a loss for a
method to simplify the postulates of Geometry in this manner: e.g. the
triangle-transversal postulate o?ers almost insuperable di?culties if one
attempts to simplify it by resolving it into a proposition about arbitrary
convex surfaces.
the first war 249I thank you very much for your interest in my article & discovery. I have
some material now that might go with my work on sensation-intensities to
make a new article: I would like to ask you what I should do with it. It is an
extension of my work on time to polyadic relations having some of the
properties of series: for example, to the ‘between’ relation among the points
of a given straight line...
16
I herewith send you my reprints, and o?er my apologies to you for not
having sent them sooner. The reason is this: I sent all of my articles destined
for distribution in America to father, with directions to ‘sow them where
they would take root’. Father probably imagined that I had sent your copies to
you direct.
I am very glad to hear that you had such an enjoyable time with us,
and I shall certainly spend next year studying under you in Cambridge. I am
just beginning to realise what my work under you there has ment [sic]
for me.
Yours very respectfully
Norbert Wiener
To the London Nation for August 15, 1914
Sir
Against the vast majority of my countrymen, even at this moment, in
the name of humanity and civilisation, I protest against our share in the
destruction of Germany.
A month ago Europe was a peaceful comity of nations; if an Englishman
killed a German, he was hanged. Now, if an Englishman kills a German, or if a
German kills an Englishman, he is a patriot, who has deserved well of his
country. We scan the newspapers with greedy eyes for news of slaughter, and
rejoice when we read of innocent young men, blindly obedient to the word
of command, mown down in thousands by the machine-guns of Liège.
Those who saw the London crowds, during the nights leading up to the
Declaration of War, saw a whole population, hitherto peaceable and humane,
precipitated in a few days down the steep slope to primitive barbarism,
letting loose, in a moment, the instincts of hatred and blood lust against
which the whole fabric of society has been raised. ‘Patriots’ in all countries
acclaim this brutal orgy as a noble determination to vindicate the right;
reason and mercy are swept away in one great ?ood of hatred; dim abstrac-
tions of unimaginable wickedness – Germany to us and the French, Russia to
the Germans – conceal the simple fact that the enemy are men, like ourselves,
neither better nor worse – men who love their homes and the sunshine, and
all the simple pleasures of common lives; men now mad with terror in the
thought of their wives, their sisters, their children, exposed, with our help, to
the tender mercies of the conquering Cossack.
the autobiography of bertrand russell 250And all this madness, all this rage, all this ?aming death of our civilisation
and our hopes, has been brought about because a set of o?cial gentlemen,
living luxurious lives, mostly stupid, and all without imagination or heart,
have chosen that it should occur rather than that any one of them should
su?er some in?nitesimal rebu? to his country’s pride. No literary tragedy can
approach the futile horror of the White Paper. The diplomatists, seeing from
the ?rst the inevitable end, mostly wishing to avoid it, yet drifted from hour
to hour of the swift crisis, restrained by punctilio from making or accepting
the small concessions that might have saved the world, hurried on at last by
blind fear to loose the armies for the work of mutual butchery.
And behind the diplomatists, dimly heard in the o?cial documents, stand
vast forces of national greed and national hatred – atavistic instincts, harmful
to mankind at its present level, but transmitted from savage and half-animal
ancestors, concentrated and directed by Governments and the Press, fostered
by the upper class as a distraction from social discontent, arti?cially nour-
ished by the sinister in?uence of the makers of armaments, encouraged by a
whole foul literature of ‘glory’, and by every text-book of history with which
the minds of children are polluted.
England, no more than other nations which participate in this war,
can be absolved either as regards its national passions or as regards its
diplomacy.
For the past ten years, under the fostering care of the Government and
a portion of the Press, a hatred of Germany has been cultivated and a fear of
the German Navy. I do not suggest that Germany has been guiltless; I do not
deny that the crimes of Germany have been greater than our own. But I do say
that whatever defensive measures were necessary should have been taken in a
spirit of calm foresight, not in a wholly needless turmoil of panic and sus-
picion. It is this deliberately created panic and suspicion that produced the
public opinion by which our participation in the war has been rendered
possible.
Our diplomacy, also, has not been guiltless. Secret arrangements, con-
cealed from Parliament and even (at ?rst) from almost all the Cabinet, created,
in spite of reiterated denials, an obligation suddenly revealed when the war
fever had reached the point which rendered public opinion tolerant of the
discovery that the lives of many, and the livelihood of all, had been pledged
by one man’s irresponsible decisions. Yet, though France knew our obliga-
tions, Sir E. Grey refused, down to the last moment, to inform Germany of the
conditions of our neutrality or of our intervention. On August 1st he reports
as follows a conversation with the German Ambassador (No. 123):
‘He asked me whether, if Germany gave a promise not to violate Belgian
neutrality, we would engage to remain neutral. I replied that I could not say
that; our hands were still free, and we were considering what our attitude
the first war 251should be. All I could say was that our attitude would be determined largely
by public opinion here, and that the neutrality of Belgium would appeal very
strongly to public opinion here. I did not think that we could give a promise of
neutrality on that condition alone. The Ambassador pressed me as to whether
I could not formulate conditions on which we would remain neutral. He
even suggested that the integrity of France and her colonies might be guaran-
teed. I said I felt obliged to refuse de?nitely any promise to remain neutral on
similar terms, and I could only say that we must keep our hands free.’
It thus appears that the neutrality of Belgium, the integrity of France and
her colonies, and the naval defence of the northern and western coasts of
France, were all mere pretexts. If Germany had agreed to our demands in all
these respects, we should still not have promised neutrality.
I cannot resist the conclusion that the Government has failed in its duty to
the nation by not revealing long-standing arrangements with the French,
until, at the last moment, it made them the basis of an appeal to honour; that
it has failed in its duty to Europe by not declaring its attitude at the beginning
of the crisis; and that it has failed in its duty to humanity by not informing
Germany of conditions which would insure its non-participation in a war
which, whatever its outcome, must cause untold hardship and the loss of
many thousands of our bravest and noblest citizens.
Yours, etc.
August 12, 1914 Bertrand Russell
From Lord Morley17
Flowermead
Princes Road
Wimbledon Park, S.W.
Aug. 7. 16 [’14]
Dear Mr Russell
Thank you for telling me that you and I are in accord on this breakdown of
right and political wisdom. The approval of a man like you is of real value,
and I value it sincerely.
Yours
M
[Morley]
From C. P. Sanger Cote Bank
Westbury-on-Trym
Bristol
Friday 7th Aug. 1914
Dear Bertie
It was very kind of you to write. I feel overwhelmed by the horror of the
whole thing. As you know I have always regarded Grey as one of the most
the autobiography of bertrand russell 252wicked and dangerous criminals that has ever disgraced civilisation, but it is
awful that a liberal Cabinet should have been parties to engineering a war to
destroy Teutonic civilisation in favour of Servians and the Russian autocracy. I
pray that the economic disturbance may be so great as to compel peace fairly
soon, but it looks as bad as can be.
Your fraternally
C. P. Sanger
From F. C. S. Schiller Esher House
Esher, Surrey
19/8/14
Dear Russell
I have just read ?rst your admirable letter in the Nation and then the
White Book, with special attention to the sequence of events which culmin-
