ated in the passage you quote from No. 123. As a result I must express to you
not only my entire agreement with your sentiments (which are those of
every civilised man) but also with your argument. It seems to me clear on his
own evidence that Sir E. Grey must bear a large share of the catastrophe,
whether he acted as he did consciously or stupidly. He steadily refused to
give Germany any assurance of neutrality on any conditions, until he pro-
duced a belief that he meant England to ?ght, and Germany thereupon ran
‘amok’. But the evidence shows that she was willing to bid high for our
neutrality.
First (No. 85) she promised the integrity of France proper and of Belgium
(tho leaving her neutrality contingent). When Grey said that wasn’t enough
(No. 101) and demanded a pledge about Belgian neutrality (No. 114), the
German Secretary of State explained, stupidly but apparently honestly, what
the di?culty was (No. 122), and said he must consult the Chancellor and
Kaiser. This the papers have represented as a refusal to give the pledge,
whereas it is obvious that Lichnowsky’s conversation with Grey (No. 123)
next day was the answer. And I don’t see how anything more could have been
conceded. Belgian neutrality and the integrity of France and her colonies,
with a hint of acceptance of any conditions Grey would impose if only he
would state them. Of course, that would have reduced the war with France to
a farce, and meant presumably that France would not be (seriously) attacked
at all, but only contained. One gets the impression throughout that Germany
really wanted to ?ght Russia and had to take on France because of the system
of alliances. Also that Russia had been goading Austria into desperation, (No.
118 s.f.), was willing to ?ght, (109, 139), was lying, or suspected of lying by
Germany (112, 121, 139 p. 72 top of 144). It is sickening to think that this
deluge of blood has been let loose all in order that the tyranny of the Tsar
shall be extended over all the world. As regards the question of Grey’s good
the first war 253faith, have you noted that the abstract of the despatches gives no hint of the
important contents of No. 123? That was presumably the reason why none of
the papers at ?rst noticed it. As for the Nation Editor’s reply to you, he simply
distorts the time order. Lichnowsky’s o?er to respect Belgian neutrality came
after Grey’s inquiry and answered it. Grey’s answers seem mere ‘fencing’, and
if he had really wanted to be neutral he would surely have said to L’s. o?ers
‘are these ?rm pledges?’. But he did not respond at all.
However it is no use crying over spilt milk, and not much to consider as
yet how European civilisation can be saved; I fear this horror will go on
long enough to ruin it completely. But I suspect that not much will be left of
the potentates, statesmen and diplomats who have brought about this
catastrophe, when the su?ering millions have borne it 6 months.
Ever sincerely yours
F. C. S. Schiller
To and from J. L. Hammond 5 Sept. 1914
Dear Hammond
I am glad Norman Angell is replying and am very satis?ed to be displaced
by him.
As regards Belgium, there are some questions I should like to ask you, not
in a controversial spirit, but because I wish, if possible, to continue to feel
some degree of political respect for the Nation, with which in the past I have
been in close agreement.
I. Were the Nation ignorant of the fact, known to all who took any
interest in military matters, that the Germans, for many years past, had
made no secret of their intention to attack France through Belgium in
the next war?
II. Did the Nation in former years regard the violation of Belgium, if it
should occur, as a just ground for war with Germany?
III. If so, why did they never give the slightest hint of this opinion, or ask
the Government to make this view clear to Germany? If the object was to save
Belgium, this was an obvious duty.
IV. Why did the Nation in the past protest against Continental entangle-
ments, when the alleged duty of protecting Belgium already involved all the
trouble that could arise from an alliance with France and Russia?
It seems to me that in the past, as in the present, the policy of the Nation has
been sentimental, in the sense that it has refused to face facts which went
against its policy. I do not see, at any rate, how it can be absolved from the
charge of either having been thoughtless in the past, or being hysterical now.
If there is an answer, I should be very grateful for it.
Yours sincerely
Bertrand Russell
the autobiography of bertrand russell 254Oat?eld
19 Oct. 1914
Dear Russell
Your letter – accusing my handwriting of a certain obscurity – was a
great shock, but less than it would have been had I not already received a
similar intimation, less tactfully conveyed, from the printers. I had therefore
already addressed myself to the painful task of reform, with the result that
you see.
My letter was in answer to one from you asking why if the Nation
thought we should ?ght over Belgium it had not let its readers know that
this was its opinion, and why if it took this view, it objected to foreign
entanglements. (I send your letter as the simplest way.) First of all I
must ask you – in justice to the Nation – to distinguish between the Nation
and me. I have had no responsibility for the paper’s line on foreign policy
(or on Armaments) with which I have not associated myself. I agreed
with the N. entirely on Persia. I am therefore not quite the right person
to answer your questions; but I think the Nation could clear itself of
inconsistency.
1. I don’t know whether the Nation was aware of this or not. (Personally I
was not. I always thought Germany might develop designs on Belgium and
Holland and in the last article on Foreign Policy that I wrote in the Speaker I
said we could not look idly on if she attacked them.)
2. The Nation drew attention to our obligation to Belgium in April 1912,
March 1913, and the week before the war.
3. I imagine that they did not call upon the Government to impress this on
Germany because they imagined that it was generally known that an English
Government would consider the obligation binding.
4. The Nation argued that the entente with France and Russia made a gen-
eral war more probable, and that if we were quite independent we could
more easily protect Belgium. ‘Germany would not violate the neutrality
of Belgium for the sake of some small military advantage if she might other-
wise reckon on our neutrality’ (March 1.1913). They may have been wrong,
their general criticisms of Grey may have been right or wrong and their
idea that it was possible to build up an Anglo-French-German entente may
have been impracticable, but there seems to be no inconsistency in working
for that policy for some years and in thinking that it is Germany that has
wrecked it. Massingham’s view is that Germany 1) would make no conces-
sions during the last fortnight for the Peace of Europe 2) insisted on invading
Belgium.
If you say that you think the Nation has not allowed enough for the warlike
forces in Germany in the past I agree. I think that has been the mistake of all
the Peace people. In his book – in many respects admirable – on The War of Steel
the first war 255and Gold Brailsford was entirely sceptical, predicting that there would never be
a great war in Europe again.
Yours
J. L. Hammond
From Helen Dudley [1914]
Thank you so much for the ?owers. They are a great comfort to me and
your letter also – I have read it many times. It was terrible the other evening –
yet if we had not seen each other it might have been in?nitely more terrible –
I might have come to feel that I could never see you again. That is all past now
– I do understand how it is with you and I feel more than ever that a
profound and lasting friendship will be possible – I hope very soon – as soon
as I get back my strength. Nothing that has happened makes any di?erence
?nally – it was and still is of the very best.
Goodbye now and if one may speak of peace in this distracted world –
peace be with you.
H.
[Helen Dudley]
To Geo. Turner, Esq. Trinity College
Cambridge
26 April 1915
Dear Sir
I am sorry to say I cannot renew my subscription to the Cambridge Liberal
Association, and I do not wish any longer to be a member of it. One of my
chief reasons for supporting the Liberal Party was that I thought them less
likely than the Unionists to engage in a European war. It turns out that ever
since they have been in o?ce they have been engaged in deceiving their
supporters, and in secretly pursuing a policy of which the outcome is abhor-
rent to me. Under these circumstances I can do nothing directly or indirectly
to support the present Government.
Yours faithfully
Bertrand Russell
The writer of the following letter was a distinguished explorer and soldier. He was in command of
the British Expedition to Tibet in 1903–4. He was a very delightful and liberal-minded man, for
whom I had a great regard. We travelled together on the ‘Mauretania’ in 1914.
From Sir Francis Younghusband London
May 11 1915
My dear Russell
I am so distressed at what you say about feeling a sense of isolation because
the autobiography of bertrand russell 256of your views regarding the war. It should be all the other way round. You
ought to be feeling the pride your friends feel in you for your independence
and honesty of thought. Vain and conceited cranks may well be abominated
by their friends. But unfortunately it is not they who have the sense of
isolation which you feel. They are too satis?ed with themselves to have any
such feelings. It is only men like you would have the feeling.
But do please remember this that your friends admire and are helped by
you even though they may not agree. It is everything that at such a time as this
you should have said what you thought. For you know more about the
Germans and other continental countries than most of us and you have also
made a special study of the ?rst principles of action. And in these times it is
of the utmost importance and value that there should be men like you by
whom the rest of us can test themselves. I knew scarcely anything of Germany
until the war came on. And I am by heredity inclined to take the soldier’s
view. So I approached this question from quite a di?erent standpoint to what
you did. I was all the more interested in knowing what you thought, and
tried to get my ideas straight and just by yours.
From my own experience of Government action and of military attitudes
I should say that it was almost impossible for any one outside the inner
Government circle to get a true view at the ?rst start o?. The crisis came so
suddenly to the outside public. Underneath the surface it had been brewing
up but we knew nothing of it – or very little. Then suddenly it breaks and we
have to form the best opinion we can. And as regards the military attitude I
know from experience how frightfully dangerous it is when you have the
physical means of enforcing your own point of view – how apt you are to
disregard any one else’s. I have seen that with military commanders on cam-
paign and probably I have been pretty bad myself. This it seems to me is what
Germany is su?ering from. She certainly had accumulated tremendous power
and this made her utterly inconsiderate of the feelings and rights of others.
And what I take it we have to drive into her is the elementary fact that it does
not pay to disregard these rights and feelings – that she must regard them.
Yours very sincerely
Francis Younghusband
A specimen typical of many: Ryde
Sept. 20 ’15
It may be perfectly true, and happily so, that you are not a Fellow of
Trinity, – but your best friends, if you have any, would not deny that you are
a silly ass. And not only a silly ass, – but a mean-spirited and lying one at
that, – for you have the sublime impertinence and untruthfulness to talk
about ‘no doubt atrocities have occurred on both sides’. You, together with
your friends (?) Pigou, Marshall, Walter G. Bell, A. R. Waller, Conybeare, etc.
the first war 257know perfectly well that to charge the British Army with atrocities is a perni-
cious lie of which only an English Boche traitor could be guilty, – and your
paltry attempt to introduce the Russians stamps you for what you are!
Yours
J. Bull
The occasion of the following letter was my taking the chair for Shaw at a meeting to discuss
the War:
From G. B. Shaw 10 Adelphi Terrace
[London] W.C.
16th October. 1915
Dear Bertrand Russell
You had better talk it over with the Webbs. As far as I am concerned, do
exactly as the spirit moves you. If you wish to reserve your ?re, it is quite easy
to open the meeting by simply stating that it is a Fabian meeting, and that the
business of the Fabian Society is, within human limits, the dispassionate
investigation of social problems, and the search for remedies for social evils;
that war is a social problem like other social problems and needs such
investigation side by side with recruiting demonstrations and patriotic
revivals; that the subject of this evenings lecture is the psychological side of
war; and that you have pleasure in calling upon etc etc etc etc.
I am certainly not going to be obviously politic, conciliatory and bland.
I mean to get listened to, and to make the lecture a success; and I also mean to
encourage the audience if I can; but I shall do it with as much ostensible
de?ance of the lightning as possible. The important thing is that the
meeting should be good humoured and plucky; for what is really the
matter with everybody is funk. In the right key one can say anything: in
the wrong key, nothing: the only delicate part of the job is the establishment
of the key.
I have no objection on earth to the lines you indicate; and before or after
my speech is the same to me. Our job is to make people serious about
the war. It is the monstrous triviality of the damned thing, and the vulgar
frivolity of what we imagine to be patriotism, that gets at my temper.
Yours ever
G.B.S.
P.S. As this will not be delivered until late afternoon (if then) I send it to
Webb’s.
the autobiography of bertrand russell 258The occasion of the following letter was my pamphlet on the policy of the Entente, in which I
criticised Gilbert Murray’s defence of Grey.
To Gilbert Murray 34, Russell Chambers
Bury Street, W.C.
28th December 1915
Dear Gilbert
Thank you for your letter. I am very sorry I gave a wrong impression about
your connection with the ?.?. I certainly thought you had had more to do
with them.
I agree with all you say about the future. I have no wish to quarrel with
those who stand for liberal ideas, however I may disagree about the war. I
thought it necessary to answer you, just as you thought it necessary to write
your pamphlet, but I did not mean that there should be anything o?ensive in
my answer; if there was, I am sorry. I feel our friendship still lives in the
eternal world, whatever may happen to it here and now. And I too can say
God bless you.
Yours ever
B. Russell
The following letter should have been included in Volume I [Part I of this edition] had it been
available at the time of the publication of Volume I. As it was not, I add it here to other letters
from Santayana.
From George Santayana Queen’s Acre
Windsor
Feb. 8. 1912
Dear Russell
Many thanks for your message, which came this morning in a letter from
your brother. I am going to spend Sunday with him at Telegraph House, but
expect to go up to Cambridge on Monday or Tuesday of next week, and count
on seeing you. Meantime I have a proposal to make, or rather to renew, to you
on behalf of Harvard College. Would it be possible for you to go there next
year, from October 1912 to June 1913, in the capacity of professor of phil-
osophy? Royce is to be taking a holiday, I shall be away, and Palmer will be
there only for the ?rst half of the academic year. Perry, Münsterberg, and two
or three young psychologists will be alone on hand. What they have in mind
is that you should give a course – three hours a week, of which one may be
delegated to the assistant which would be provided for you, to read papers,
etc. – in logic, and what we call a ‘Seminary’ or ‘Seminar’ in anything you
liked. It would also be possible for you to give some more popular lectures if
you liked, either at Harvard, or at the Lowell Institute in Boston. For the latter
there are separate fees, and the salary of a professor is usually $4000 (￡800).
the first war 259We hope you will consider this proposal favourably, as there is no one whom
the younger school of philosophers in America are more eager to learn of
than of you. You would bring new standards of precision and independence
of thought which would open their eyes, and probably have the greatest
in?uence on the rising generation of professional philosophers in that country.
There is no particular urgency in receiving your answer, so that you
needn’t write to me at all, but wait until I see you next week, unless your
decision is absolutely clear and unalterable, in which case you might send me
a line to Telegraph House. My permanent address is
c/o Brown Shipley & Co.
123 Pall Mall, S.W.
Yours sincerely
G. Santayana
P.S. I didn’t mean to decline your kind o?er to put me up, when I go to
Cambridge, but as I am going in the middle of the week, I don’t know
whether it would be equally convenient for you to do so.
Oxford, May 5th [1915]
I read this about ‘war babies’ in a Spanish newspaper: ‘Kitchener, in creat-
ing an army, has created love. This is a great change in a country where only
marriage was known before.’
G. Santayana
[Dec. ’17]
The situation is certainly bad from a military point of view, or for those
who are angry because the war interferes with their private or political
machinations. It may last a long time yet; or else be renewed after a mock
peace. But, looking at it all calmly, like a philosopher, I ?nd nothing to be
pessimistic about. When I go to Sandford to lunch, which is often, it does my
heart good to see so many freshly ploughed ?elds: England is becoming a
cultivated country, instead of being a land of moors and fens, like barbarous
North Germany. That alone seems to me more than a compensation for all
losses: it is setting the foundations right. As for Russia, I rather like Lenin, (not
that fatuous Kerensky!); he has an ideal he is willing to ?ght for, and it is a
profoundly anti-German ideal. If he remains in power, he may yet have to
?ght the Germans, and it will be with very poisonous gas indeed. Besides, I
think their plans at Berlin have profoundly miscarried, and that the Prussian
educational-industrial-military domination we were threatened with is
undermined at home. Military victory would not now do, because the more
peoples they rope in, the more explosives they will be exploding under their
own establishment.
the autobiography of bertrand russell 260As for deaths and loss of capital, I don’t much care. The young men killed
would grow older if they lived, and then they would be good for nothing;
and after being good for nothing for a number of years they would die of
catarrh or a bad kidney or the halter or old age – and would that be less
horrible? I am willing, almost glad, that the world should be poorer: I only
wish the population too could become more sparse: and I am perfectly
willing to live on a bread-ticket and a lodging-ticket and be known only by a
number instead of a baptismal name, provided all this made an end of living
on lies, and really cleared the political air. But I am afraid the catastrophe
won’t be great enough for that, and that some false arrangement will be
patched up – in spite of Lenin – so that we shall be very much as we were
before. People are not intelligent. It is very unreasonable to expect them to be
so, and that is a fate my philosophy reconciled me to long ago. How else
could I have lived for forty years in America?
All this won’t interest you, but since it is written I will let it go.
[G. Santayana]
To Ottoline Morrell [Cambridge]
1915
Did you see in to-day’s Morning Post a letter from an American, dated ‘Ritz
Hotel’, expressing his horri?ed bewilderment to ?nd, in New College
Chapel, a tablet inscribed ‘Pro Patria’, on which are being inscribed the
names of New College men who have been killed in the war, among the rest
three Germans! He expressed his horror to the verger, who replied ‘They died
for their country. I knew them – they were very ?ne men.’ It is creditable to
New College. The worthy American thinks it necessary to give us a lesson in
how to be patriots.
‘Elizabeth’ [my sister-in-law] expressed regret at the fact that her 5
German nephews in the war are all still alive. She is a true patriot. The
American would like her.
I could come to you Tues. & Wed. 15th and 16th, if it suited you. I should
like to see [D. H.] Lawrence...
[Cambridge]
Sunday evg.
[Postmark 10 May ’15]
I am feeling the weight of the war much more since I came back here –
one is made so terribly aware of the waste when one is here. And Rupert
Brooke’s death brought it home to me. It is deadly to be here now, with all
the usual life stopped. There will be other generations – yet I keep fearing
that something of civilisation will be lost for good, as something was lost
when Greece perished in just this way. Strange how one values civilisation –
more than all one’s friends or anything – the slow achievement of men
the first war 261emerging from the brute – it seems the ultimate thing one lives for. I don’t
live for human happiness, but for some kind of struggling emergence of mind.
And here, at most times, that is being helped on – and what has been done is
given to new generations, who travel on from where we have stopped. And
now it is all arrested, and no one knows if it will start again at anything like
the point where it stopped. And all the elderly apostates are overjoyed.
34 Russell Chambers
Wed. night
[Postmark 27 My. ’15]
I am only just realising how Cambridge oppressed me. I feel far more
alive here, and far better able to face whatever horrors the time may bring.
Cambridge has ceased to be a home and a refuge to me since the war began. I
?nd it unspeakably painful being thought a traitor. Every casual meeting in
the Court makes me quiver with sensitive apprehension. One ought to be
more hardened.
My Dearest, forgive me that I have been so horrid lately. But really I have
had rather a bad time, and I have been haunted by horrors, and I didn’t
want to speak all that was in my mind until it had subsided, because it was
excessive and mad. So I got sti? and dull.
Friday
[Postmark 11 Ju ’15]
I think I will make friends with the No-Conscription people. The ?.?.?. is
too mild and troubled with irrelevancies. It will be all right after the war, but
not now. I wish good people were not so mild. The non-resistance people I
know here are so Sunday-schooly – one feels they don’t know the volcanic
side of human nature, they have little humour, no intensity of will, nothing of
what makes men e?ective. They would never have denounced the Pharisees
or turned out the money-changers. How passionately I long that one could
break through the prison walls in one’s own nature. I feel now-a-days so
much as if some great force for good were imprisoned within me by scepti-
cism and cynicism and lack of faith. But those who have no such restraint
always seem ignorant and a little foolish. It all makes one feel very lonely.
I can’t make head or tail of Lawrence’s philosophy. I dread talking to him
about it. It is not sympathetic to me.
July 1915
Lawrence took up my time from morning till 10.30, so I couldn’t write
yesterday. We had a terri?c argument but not a disastrous one. He attacks me
for various things that I don’t feel to blame about – chie?y, in e?ect, for
having a scienti?c temper and a respect for fact. I will send you his written
comments on my syllabus. I shall be glad to know what you think of them.
the autobiography of bertrand russell 262He took me to see a Russian Jew, Kotiliansky, and [Middleton] Murry and
Mrs Murry [Katherine Mans?eld] – they were all sitting together in a bare
o?ce high up next door to the Holborn Restaurant, with the windows shut,
smoking Russian cigarettes without a moment’s intermission, idle and
cynical. I thought Murry beastly and the whole atmosphere of the three dead
and putrefying.
Then we went to the Zoo – the baboon gave me much cynical satisfaction:
he looked long and deliberately at everybody, and then slowly showed his
teeth and snarled, with inconceivable hatred and disgust. Swift would have
loved him. Then we went up to Hampstead, to the Radfords, where Mrs
Lawrence was staying. I was dead tired after the ?rst hour, as we began arguing
at once. I told Lawrence that I thought we ought to be independent of each
other, at any rate at ?rst, and not try to start a school. When he talks politics he
seems to me so wild that I could not formally work with him. I hope he won’t
