three weeks.
From Lieut. A. Graeme West 9th Batt. Oxfordshire &
Buckinghamshire Light
Infantry
Bovington Camp
Wareham
Dorset
Sunday, Sept. 3. 1916
Dear Mr Russell
Seeing the new scene that has been added to this amazing farce of which
you are the unfortunate protagonist, I could not help writing to you. Of
course you know that such sane men as still live, or have kept their sanity,
have nothing but admiration for you, and therefore you may cry that this
note is impertinent. Literally, I suppose it is; but not to me.
I cannot resist the joy of communicating directly with one whom I
admired so much before the war, as the writer of the clearest and ?nest
philosophical English prose, and whom I admire so much more now when
all the intellectuals, except, thank god, Shaw, have lost the use of their reason.
I think there may be some shade of excuse for this liberty at a time when
reason and thought are in danger and when you, their ablest champion, are
the autobiography of bertrand russell 282the victim of incompetence and derision: at such a time those who love
Justice should speak.
I know you must have many friends in the army, and are aware that it, too,
contains men of good-will, though it is through it and its domination that
England ?nds herself as she is; yet one more assurance of complete under-
standing and sympathy may not annoy you.
Were I back in the Ranks again – and I wish I were – I could have picked
half-a-dozen men of our platoon to have signed with me: here, it is not so.
Thank you, then, for all you are and all you have written, for ‘A Free Man’s
Worship’ and Justice in War Time and The Policy of the Entente and many others; and
I hope that I (and you, of course, for we don’t know what they mayn’t do
to you) may live to see you.
Yours sincerely
A. Graeme West
2nd Lieut.
From H. G. Wells 52, St James’s Court
[to Miles Malleson] Buckingham Gate, S.W.
[1916]
My dear Sir
I think that a small minority of the ??’s are sincerely honest men but I
believe that unless the path of the ?? is made di?cult it will supply a stam-
pede track for every variety of shirker. Naturally a lot of the work of control
falls on the hands of clumsy and rough minded men. I really don’t feel very
much sympathy for these ‘martyrs’. I don’t feel so sure as you do that all ??’s
base the objection on love rather than hate. I have never heard either Cannan
or Norman speak lovingly of any human being. Their normal attitude has
always been one of opposition – to anything. Enthusiasm makes them liver-
ish. And the Labour Leader group I believe to be thoroughly dishonest, Ramsey
MacDonald, I mean, Morel and the editor. I may be wrong but that is my slow
and simple conviction.
Very sincerely yours
H. G. Wells
My statement concerning my meeting with General Cockerill on September 5th, 1916:
I called at the War O?ce with Sir Francis Younghusband by appointment at
3.15 to see General Cockerill. He had beside him a report of my speeches in
S. Wales and drew special attention to a sentence in a speech I made at Cardi?
saying there was no good reason why this war should continue another day. He
said that such a statement made to miners or munition workers was calculated
to diminish their ardour. He said also that I was encouraging men to refuse to
the first war 283?ght for their country. He said he would withdraw the order forbidding me to
enter prohibited areas if I would abandon political propaganda and return
to mathematics. I said I could not conscientiously give such an undertaking.
He said:
‘You and I probably regard conscience di?erently. I regard it as a still small
voice, but when it becomes blatant and strident I suspect it of no longer
being a conscience.’
I replied:
‘You do not apply this principle to those who write and speak in favour of
the war; you do not consider that if they hold their opinions in secret they are
conscientious men, but if they give utterance to them in the Press or on the
platform they are mere propagandists. There seems some lack of justice in
this di?erentiation.’
He remained silent a long while and then replied:
‘Yes, that is true. But’, he said, ‘you have said your say, can you not rest
content with having said it and return to those other pursuits in which’ – so
he was pleased to add – ‘you have achieved so much distinction? Do you not
think there is some lack of a sense of humour in going on reiterating the
same thing?’
I failed to reply that I had observed this lack – if it were one – in The Times,
the Morning Post and other patriotic organs, which appeared to me to be
somewhat addicted to reiteration, and that if it would not serve any purpose
to repeat myself I failed to see why he was so anxious to prevent me from
doing so. But what I did say was that new issues are constantly arising and I
could not barter away my right to speak on such issues. I said:
‘I appeal to you as a man, would you not feel less respect for me if I agreed
to this bargain which you propose?’
After a long hesitation he replied:
‘No, I should respect you more; I should think better of your sense of
humour if you realised the uselessness of saying the same thing over and over
again.’
I told him that I was thinking of delivering lectures on the general principles
of politics in Glasgow, Edinburgh and Newcastle. He asked whether these
would involve the propaganda he objected to. I said no, not directly, but they
the autobiography of bertrand russell 284would state the general principles out of which the propaganda has grown,
and no doubt men with su?cient logical acumen would be able to draw
inferences. He then gave it to be understood that such lectures could not be
permitted. He wound up with an earnest appeal to me not to make the task of
the soldiers more di?cult when they were engaged in a life and death
struggle.
I told him that he ?attered me in supposing my in?uence su?cient to have
any such result, but that I could not possibly cease my propaganda as the
result of a threat and that if he had wished his appeal to have weight he ought
not to have accompanied it by a threat. I said I was most sincerely sorry to be
compelled to do anything which the authorities considered embarrassing,
but that I had no choice in the matter.
We parted with mutual respect, and on my side at least, without the
faintest feeling of hostility. Nevertheless it was perfectly clear that he meant
to proceed to extremities if I did not abandon political propaganda.
To Ottoline Morrell [September 1916]
Monday night
My Darling
There seems a good chance that the authorities will relent towards me – I
am half sorry! I shall soon have come to the end of the readjustment with Mrs
E. [Mrs T. S. Eliot] I think it will all be all right, on a better basis. As soon as it
is settled, I will come to Garsington. I long to come.
I have been realising various things during this time. It is odd how one
?nds out what one really wants, and how very sel?sh it always is. What I want
permanently – not consciously, but deep down – is stimulus, the sort of thing
that keeps my brain active and exuberant. I suppose that is what makes me a
vampire. I get a stimulus most from the instinctive feeling of success. Failure
makes me collapse. Odd things give me a sense of failure – for instance, the
way the ??s all take alternative service, except a handful. Wittgenstein’s
criticism gave me a sense of failure. The real trouble between you and me has
always been that you gave me a sense of failure – at ?rst, because you were
not happy; then, in other ways. To be really happy with you, not only
momentarily, I should have to lose that sense of failure. I had a sense of
success with Mrs E. because I achieved what I meant to achieve (which was
not so very di?cult), but now I have lost that, not by your fault in the least.
The sense of success helps my work: when I lose it, my writing grows dull
and lifeless. I often feel success quite apart from happiness: it depends upon
what one puts one’s will into. Instinctively, I turn to things in which success
is possible, just for the stimulus.
I have always cared for you in yourself, and not as a stimulus or for any
self-centred reason; but when I have felt that through caring for you and
the first war 285feeling unsuccessful I have lost energy, it has produced a sort of instinctive
resentment. That has been at the bottom of everything – and now that I have
at last got to the bottom of it, it won’t be a trouble any longer. But unless I can
cease to have a sense of failure with you, I am bound to go on looking for
stimulus elsewhere from time to time. That would only cease if I ceased to
care about work – I am sure all this is the exact truth.
I would set my will in a di?erent direction as regards you, if I knew of any
direction in which I could succeed. But I don’t think it can be done in that way.
The rare moments of mystic insight that I have had have been when I was
free from the will to succeed. But they have brought a new kind of success,
which I have at once noticed and wanted, and so my will has drifted back into
the old ways. And I don’t believe I should do anything worth doing without
that sort of will. It is very tangled.
To Constance Malleson (Colette) Gordon Square
September 29, 1916
You are already where I have struggled to be, and without the weariness of
long e?ort. I have hated many people in the past. The language of hate still
comes to me easily, but I don’t really hate anyone now. It is defeat that makes
one hate people – and now I have no sense of defeat anywhere. No one need
ever be defeated – it rests with oneself to make oneself invincible. Quite lately
I have had a sense of freedom I never had before . . . I don’t like the spirit of
socialism – I think freedom is the basis of everything.
***
‘The keys to an endless peace’ –
I am not so great as that, really not – I know where peace is – I have seen it,
and felt it at times – but I can still imagine misfortunes that would rob me of
peace. But there is a world of peace, and one can live in it and yet be active
still over all that is bad in the world. Do you know how sometimes all the
barriers of personality fall away, and one is free for all the world to come in –
the stars and the night and the wind, and all the passions and hopes of men,
and all the slow centuries of growth – and even the cold abysses of space
grow friendly – ‘E il naufragar m’e dolce in questo mare’. And from that moment
some quality of ultimate peace enters into all one feels – even when one feels
most passionately. I felt it the other night by the river – I thought you were
going to withdraw yourself – I felt that if you did I should lose the most
wonderful thing that had ever come to me – and yet an ultimate fundamental
peace remained – if it hadn’t, I believe I should have lost you then. I cannot
bear the littleness and enclosing walls of purely personal things – I want to live
always open to the world, I want personal love to be like a beacon ?re lighting
up the darkness, not a timid refuge from the cold as it is very often.
the autobiography of bertrand russell 286London under the stars is strangely moving. The momentariness of the
separate lives seems so strange –
In some way I can’t put into words, I feel that some of our thoughts and
feelings are just of the moment, but others are part of the eternal world, like
the stars – even if their actual existence is passing, something – some spirit or
essence – seems to last on, to be part of the real history of the universe, not
only of the separate person. Somehow, that is how I want to live, so that
as much of life as possible may have that quality of eternity. I can’t explain
what I mean – you will have to know – of course I don’t succeed in living that
way – but that is ‘the shining key to peace’.
Oh, I am happy, happy, happy –
B.
Gordon Square
October 23, 1916
I have meant to tell you many things about my life, and every time the
moment has conquered me. I am strangely unhappy because the pattern of
my life is complicated, because my nature is hopelessly complicated; a mass
of contradictory impulses; and out of all this, to my intense sorrow, pain to
you must grow. The centre of me is always and eternally a terrible pain – a
curious wild pain – a searching for something beyond what the world con-
tains, something trans?gured and in?nite – the beati?c vision – God – I do
not ?nd it, I do not think it is to be found – but the love of it is my life – it’s
like passionate love for a ghost. At times it ?lls me with rage, at times with
wild despair, it is the source of gentleness and cruelty and work, it ?lls every
passion that I have – it is the actual spring of life within me.
I can’t explain it or make it seem anything but foolishness – but whether
foolish or not, it is the source of whatever is any good in me. I have known
others who had it – Conrad especially – but it is rare – it sets one oddly
apart and gives a sense of great isolation – it makes people’s gospels often
seem thin. At most times, now, I am not conscious of it, only when I am
strongly stirred, either happily or unhappily. I seek escape from it, though
I don’t believe I ought to. In that moment with you by the river I felt it most
intensely.
‘Windows always open to the world’ I told you once, but through one’s
windows one sees not only the joy and beauty of the world, but also its pain
and cruelty and ugliness, and the one is as well worth seeing as the other, and
one must look into hell before one has any right to speak of heaven.
B.
the first war 287From Lieut. A. Graeme West Wednesday night
Dec. 27. 1916
Dear Mr Russell
To-night here on the Somme I have just ?nished your Principles of Social
Reconstruction which I found waiting for me when I came out of the line. I had
seen a couple of Reviews of it, one in the Nation, one in Land and Water and from
the praise of the former and the thinly veiled contempt of the latter I augured
a good book. It encouraged me all the more as the state of opinion in England
seems to fall to lower and lower depths of undigni?ed hatred. It is only on
account of such thoughts as yours, on account of the existence of men and
women like yourself that it seems worth while surviving the war – if one
should haply survive. Outside the small circle of that cool light I can discern
nothing but a scorching desert.
Do not fear though that the life of the spirit is dying in us, nor that hope or
energy will be spent; to some few of us at any rate the hope of helping to
found some ‘city of God’ carries us away from these present horrors and
beyond the grayer intolerance of thought as we see in it our papers. We shall
not faint and the energy and endurance we have used here on an odious task
we shall be able to redouble in the creative work that peace will bring to do.
We are too young to be permanently damaged in body or spirit, even by these
su?erings.
Rather what we feared until your book came was that we would ?nd no
one left in England who would build with us. Remember, then, that we are
to be relied on to do twice as much afterwards as we have done during the
war, and after reading your book that determination grew intenser than ever;
it is for you that we would wish to live on.
I have written to you before and should perhaps apologise for writing
again, but that seems to me rather absurd: you cannot mind knowing that
you are understood and admired and that those exist who would be glad to
work with you.
Yours sincerely
A. Graeme West. 2nd Lt.
6th Oxford & Bucks. L.I.
B.E.F.
From the Press:
?????? ?????????? ?????? ?????? ????, Oxford and Bucks
Light Infantry, whose death is o?cially announced to-day, was the eldest son
of Arthur Birt West, 4 Holly Terrace, Highgate. He fell on April 3 [1917],
aged 25.
the autobiography of bertrand russell 288To Colette Guildford
December 28, 1916
How can love blossom among explosions and falling Zeppelins and all the
surroundings of our love? It has to grow jagged and painful before it can live
in such a world. I long for it to be otherwise – but soft things die in this
horror, and our love has to have pain for its life blood.
I hate the world and almost all the people in it. I hate the Labour Congress
and the journalists who send men to be slaughtered, and the fathers who feel
a smug pride when their sons are killed, and even the paci?sts who keep
saying human nature is essentially good, in spite of all the daily proofs to the
contrary. I hate the planet and the human race – I am ashamed to belong to
such a species – And what is the good of me in that mood?
B.
From Dorothy Mackenzie 77, Lady Margaret Road
Highgate. N.W.5
June 5th. [1917]
Dear Mr Russel
I am glad you sent Graeme West’s letters to the Cambridge Magazine, for I am
very sure he speaks for a great many, some of whom will survive.
When I had read your Principles of Social Reconstruction, being a young
woman instead of a young man, I had the joy of being able to come and hear
you speak at the Nursery of the Fabian Society. And I dared to say you were
too gloomy, and that the world was not so spoilt as you thought. It was
because West was in my thoughts that I was able to do that, and kindly
you smiled at the optimism of youth, but the sadness of your smiling set
me fearing.
Now I know that you were right and I was wrong. But I assure you
Mr Russel, that we women want to build, and we unhappily do survive. And I
can end my letter as he ended his and say very truly ‘it is for you that we
would wish to live on’.
It is very di?cult to know what to do. I am an elementary teacher, and
every class in the school but mine is disciplined by a military method. I
have to work as it were by stealth, disguising my ideas as much as possible.
Children, as you are aware, do not develop themselves, in our elementary
schools. Your chapter on education encouraged me more than anything I
have read or heard since I started teaching. I thank you for that encourage-
ment. It is most sad to teach in these days; underpaid, overworked, the man I
loved most killed for a cause in which he no longer believed, out of sympathy
with most of my friends and relations, I ?nd strength and comfort in you
through your book. I feel indeed that you understand.
Dorothy Mackenzie
the first war 289From A. N. Whitehead Twelve
Elm Park Gardens
Chelsea. S.W.
Jan. 8th, 17
Dear Bertie
I am awfully sorry, but you do not seem to appreciate my point.
I don’t want my ideas propagated at present either under my name or
anybody else’s – that is to say, as far as they are at present on paper. The result
will be an incomplete misleading exposition which will inevitably queer the
pitch for the ?nal exposition when I want to put it out.
My ideas and methods grow in a di?erent way to yours and the period of
incubation is long and the result attains its intelligible form in the ?nal
stage, – I do not want you to have my notes which in chapters are lucid, to
precipitate them into what I should consider as a series of half-truths. I have
worked at these ideas o? and on for all my life, and should be left quite bare
on one side of my speculative existence if I handed them over to some one
else to elaborate. Now that I begin to see day-light, I do not feel justi?ed or
necessitated by any view of scienti?c advantage in so doing.
I am sorry that you do not feel able to get to work except by the help of
these notes – but I am sure that you must be mistaken in this, and that there
must be the whole of the remaining ?eld of thought for you to get to work
on – though naturally it would be easier for you to get into harness with
some formed notes to go on. But my reasons are conclusive. I will send the
work round to you naturally, when I have got it into the form which
expresses my ideas.
Yours a?ectly
Alfred N. Whitehead
Before the war started, Whitehead had made some notes on our knowledge of the external world
and I had written a book on this subject in which I made use with due acknowledgement of ideas
that Whitehead had passed on to me. The above letter shows that this had vexed him. In fact, it
put an end to our collaboration.
To Lady Emily Lutyens 57, Gordon Square
W.C. (1)
21.III.17
Dear Lady Emily
I have shortened my article by seven lines, which was what seemed
needed – six lines close to the end and one in the middle of the last column.
Is it really necessary to say that I am ‘heir-presumptive to the present
Earl Russell’? I cannot see that my brother’s having no children makes my
opinions more worthy of respect.
the autobiography of bertrand russell 290I have corrected a few inaccuracies in the biography.
‘Critical detachment’ is hardly my attitude to the war. My attitude is
one of intense and passionate protest – I consider it a horror, an infamy,
an overwhelming and unmitigated disaster, making the whole of life
ghastly.
Yours very sincerely
Bertrand Russell
To Colette Gordon Square
March 27, 1917
I cannot express a thousandth part of what is in my heart – our day in
the country was so marvellous. All through Sunday it grew and grew, and
at night it seemed to pass beyond the bounds of human things. I feel no
longer all alone in the world. Your love brings warmth into all the recesses
of my being. You used to speak of a wall of separation between us. That
no longer exists. The winter is ending, we shall have sunshine and the song
of birds, and wild ?owers, primroses, bluebells, and then the scent of
the may. We will keep joy alive in us. You are strong and brave and free, and
?lled with passion and love – the very substance of all my dreams come
to life.
Gordon Square
September 23, 1917
The whole region in my mind where you lived, seems burnt out.
There is nothing for us both but to try and forget each other.
Goodbye –
B.
From Colette Mecklenburgh Square
September 26, 1917
I thought, until last night, that our love would grow and grow until it was
strong as loneliness itself.
I have gazed down Eternity with you. I have held reins of glory in my two
hands – Now, though I will still believe in the beauty of eternal things, they
will not be for me. You will put the crown on your work. You still stand on
the heights of impersonal greatness. I worship you, but our souls are
strangers – I pray that I may soon be worn out and this torture ended.
C.
the first war 291To Colette Gordon Square
October 25, 1917
I have known real happiness with you – If I could live by my creed, I
should know it still. I feel imprisoned in egotism – weary of e?ort, too tired
to break through into love.
How can I bridge the gulf?
B.
From The Tribunal. Thursday, January 3rd, 1918
??? ?????? ????? ?????
by Bertrand Russell
The more we hear about the Bolsheviks, the more the legend of our patriotic
press becomes exploded. We were told that they were incompetent, visionary
and corrupt, that they must fall shortly, that the mass of Russians were against
them, and that they dared not permit the Constituent Assembly to meet. All
these statements have turned out completely false, as anyone may see
by reading the very interesting despatch from Arthur Ransome in the Daily
News of December 31st.
Lenin, whom we have been invited to regard as a German Jew, is really a
Russian aristocrat who has su?ered many years of persecution for his opin-
ions. The social revolutionaries who were represented as enemies of the
Bolsheviks have formed a connection with them. The Constituent Assembly is
to meet as soon as half its members have reached Petrograd, and very nearly
half have already arrived. All charges of German money remain entirely
unsupported by one thread of evidence.
The most noteworthy and astonishing triumph of the Bolsheviks is in their
negotiations with the Germans. In a military sense Russia is defenceless, and
we all supposed it a proof that they were mere visionaries when they started
negotiations by insisting upon not surrendering any Russian territory to the
Germans. We were told that the Germans would infallibly insist upon annex-
ing the Baltic Provinces and establishing a suzerainty over Poland. So far from
this being the case, the German and Austrian Governments have o?cially
announced that they are prepared to conclude a Peace on the Russian basis of
no annexations and no indemnities, provided that it is a general Peace, and
