said, to be arrogant and unfriendly at our last meeting. I was extremely sorry
for this since my feelings towards him were, as they had always been, most
friendly and I felt anything but arrogant towards him. But the last meeting to
which he alluded had been a somewhat trying occasion to me. His wife Mary
had asked me to lunch with them and I had gone. At the time of my separ-
ation from her sister Alys, she had written me a cutting letter saying that they
did not wish to have anything further to do with me. Her invitation to lunch
came many years later. I was glad to accept as I had never wished any break in
our friendship, but I felt a little awkward and shy as I could not forget entirely
her previous letter. Bernard Berenson had evidently never known of the letter
or had forgotten it. I myself had felt that the luncheon had healed the breach
and had been glad when he begged me to come to I Tatti again as I should
have liked to do.
Meantime, as I assessed the response that my broadcast had achieved and
considered what should be done next, I had realised that the point that I
must concentrate upon was the need of co-operation among nations. It had
occurred to me that it might be possible to formulate a statement that a
number of very well-known and respected scientists of both capitalist and
communist ideologies would be willing to sign calling for further joint
action. Before taking any measures, however, I had written to Einstein to learn
what he thought of such a plan. He had replied with enthusiasm, but had said
the autobiography of bertrand russell 546that, because he was not well and could hardly keep up with present com-
mitments, he himself could do nothing to help beyond sending me the
names of various scientists who, he thought, would be sympathetic. He had
begged me, nevertheless, to carry out my idea and to formulate the statement
myself. This I had done, basing the statement upon my Christmas broadcast,
‘Man’s Peril’. I had drawn up a list of scientists of both East and West and had
written to them, enclosing the statement, shortly before I went to Rome with
the Parliamentarians. I had, of course, sent the statement to Einstein for his
approval, but had not yet heard what he thought of it and whether he would
be willing to sign it. As we ?ew from Rome to Paris, where the World
Government Association were to hold further meetings, the pilot announced
the news of Einstein’s death. I felt shattered, not only for the obvious reasons,
but because I saw my plan falling through without his support. But, on my
arrival at my Paris hotel, I found a letter from him agreeing to sign. This was
one of the last acts of his public life.
While I was in Paris I had a long discussion about my plan with Frédéric
Joliot-Curie. He warmly welcomed the plan and approved of the statement
except for one phrase: I had written, ‘It is feared that if many bombs are used
there will be universal death – sudden only for a fortunate minority, but for
the majority a slow torture of disease and disintegration’. He did not like my
calling the minority ‘fortunate’. ‘To die is not fortunate’, he said. Perhaps he
was right. Irony, taken internationally, is tricky. In any case, I agreed to delete
it. For some time after I returned to England, I heard nothing from him. He
was ill, I learned later. Nor could I induce an answer from various other
important scientists. I never did hear from the Chinese scientist to whom I
had written. I think the letter to him was probably misaddressed. Einstein had
advised me to enlist the help of Niels Bohr who, he thought, would certainly
be in favour of my plan and my statement. But I could achieve no reply from
him for many weeks in spite of repeated letters and telegrams. Then came
a short letter saying that he wished to have nothing to do with either plan or
statement. The Russian Academicians, still suspicious of the West, also refused
to sign, although they wrote commending the plan with some warmth. After
some correspondence, Professor Otto Hahn refused to sign, because, I under-
stood, he was working for the forthcoming ‘Mainau Declaration’ of scientists.
This declaration was already in preparation, but seemed to me to be some-
what emasculated by the fact that it was intended to include among its
signatories only scientists of the West. Fortunately, others who signed the
Mainau Declaration agreed with me and signed both. My most personal
disappointment was that I could not obtain the signature of Lord Adrian,
the President of the Royal Society and Master of my College, Trinity. I knew
that he agreed with the principles in my broadcast, which were those of the
manifesto that I hoped he would sign. He had himself spoken publicly in
at home and abroad 547similar vein. And I had been pleased when I learned that Trinity wished to
have in its Library a manuscript of ‘Man’s Peril’. But when I discussed my
statement or manifesto with him I thought I understood why he was
reluctant to sign. ‘It is because it is too eloquent, isn’t it?’ I asked. ‘Ye s’, he
said. Many of the scientists to whom I wrote, however, at once warmly agreed
to sign, and one, Linus Pauling, who had heard of the plan only at second
hand, o?ered his signature. I was glad to accept the o?er.
When I look back upon this time I do not see how the days and nights
provided time to get through all that I did. Journeys to Rome and Paris
and again to Scotland, family troubles, arrangements to settle in North Wales
for the holidays, letters, discussions, visitors, and speeches. I wrote innumer-
able articles. I had frequent interviews and much correspondence with an
American, R. C. Marsh, who was collecting and editing various early essays of
mine which appeared the following year under the title Logic and Knowledge. And
I was also preparing my book Portraits from Memory for publication in 1956. In
January, 1955, I gave a lecture at the British Academy on J. S. Mill, which I
had considerable di?culty in composing. I had already spoken so often about
Mill. But the speech had one phrase that I cherish: in speaking about the fact
that propositions have a subject and a predicate, I said it had led to ‘three
thousand years of important error’. And the speech was acclaimed in a most
gratifying manner. The audience rose, thumped and clapped.
June came and still all the replies to my letters to the scientists had not been
received. I felt that in any case some concrete plan must be made as to how
the manifesto should be publicised. It seemed to me that it should be given a
dramatic launching in order to call attention to it, to what it said and to the
eminence of those who upheld it. After discarding many plans, I decided to
get expert advice. I knew the editor of the Observer slightly and believed him to
be liberal and sympathetic. He proved at that time to be both. He called in
colleagues to discuss the matter. They agreed that something more was
needed than merely publishing the fact that the manifesto had been written
and signed by a number of eminent scientists of varying ideologies. They
suggested that a press conference should be held at which I should read the
document and answer questions about it. They did far more than this. They
o?ered to arrange and ?nance the conference with the proviso that it not
become, until later, public knowledge that they had done so. It was decided
?nally that the conference should take place on July 9th (1955). A room was
engaged in Caxton Hall a week before. Invitations were sent to the editors of
all the journals and to the representatives of foreign journals as well as to the
??? and representatives of foreign radio and ?? in London. This invitation
was merely to a conference at which something important of world-wide
interest was to be published. The response was heartening and the room had
to be changed to the largest in the Hall.
the autobiography of bertrand russell 548It was a dreadful week. All day long the telephone rang and the doorbell
pealed. Journalists and wireless directors wanted to be told what this impor-
tant piece of news was to be. Each hoped, apparently, for a scoop. Three
times daily someone from the Daily Worker rang to say that their paper had
not been sent an invitation. Daily, three times, they were told that they had
been invited. But they seemed to be so used to being cold-shouldered that
they could not believe it. After all, though they could not be told this, one
purpose of the manifesto was to encourage co-operation between the com-
munist and the non-communist world. The burden of all this ?urry fell
upon my wife and my housekeeper. I was not permitted to appear or to speak
on the telephone except to members of the family. None of us could leave
the house. I spent the week sitting in a chair in my study trying to read.
At intervals, I was told later, I muttered dismally, ‘This is going to be a
damp squib’. My memory is that it rained during the entire week and was
very cold.
The worst aspect of the a?air was that not long before this I had received a
letter from Joliot-Curie saying that he feared that, after all, he could not sign
the manifesto. I could not make out why he had changed. I begged him to
come to London to discuss the matter, but he was too ill. I had been in
constant touch with Dr E. H. S. Burhop in order that the manifesto should not
in any way o?end those of communist ideology. It was largely due to his
e?orts that the night before the conference was scheduled to take place
Monsieur Biquard came from Paris to discuss with Burhop and myself Joliot-
Curie’s objections. Monsieur Biquard has since taken Joliot-Curie’s place in
the World Federation of Scienti?c Workers. They arrived at 11.30 p.m. Some-
time after midnight we came to an agreement. The manifesto could not be
changed from the form it had had when Einstein had signed it and, in any
case, it was too late to obtain the agreement of the other signatories to a
change. I suggested, therefore, that Joliot-Curie’s objections be added in
footnotes where necessary and be included in my reading of the text the
following morning. I had hit upon this scheme in dealing with an objection
of one of the Americans. Joliot-Curie’s emissary at last agreed to this and
signed the manifesto for him, as he had been empowered to do if an agree-
ment could be reached.
Another di?culty that had beset me was the ?nding of a chairman for the
meeting who would not only add lustre to the occasion but would be
equipped to help me in the technical questions that would surely be asked.
For one reason or another everyone whom I approached refused the job. I
confess that I suspected their refusal to have been the result of pusillanimity.
Whoever took part in this manifesto or its launching ran the risk of disap-
proval that might, for a time at any rate, injure them or expose them to
ridicule, which they would probably mind even more. Or perhaps their
at home and abroad 549refusal was the result of their dislike of the intentional dramatic quality of
the occasion. Finally, I learned that Professor Josef Rotblat was sympathetic.
He was, and still is, an eminent physicist at the Medical College of
St Bartholomew’s Hospital and Executive vice-President of the Atomic
Scientists’ Association. He bravely and without hesitation agreed to act as
Chairman and did so when the time came with much skill. From the time of
that fortunate meeting I have often worked closely with Professor Rotblat and
I have come to admire him greatly. He can have few rivals in the courage and
integrity and complete self-abnegation with which he has given up his own
career (in which, however, he still remains eminent) to devote himself to
combating the nuclear peril as well as other, allied evils. If ever these evils are
eradicated and international a?airs are straightened out, his name should
stand very high indeed among the heroes.
Amongst others who encouraged me at this meeting were Alan Wood and
Mary Wood who, with Kenneth Harris of the Observer, executed a variety of
burdensome and vexatious drudgeries to make the occasion go o? well. And
in the event it did go well. The hall was packed, not only with men, but with
recording and television machines. I read the manifesto and the list of signa-
tories and explained how and why it had come into being. I then, with
Rotblat’s help, replied to questions from the ?oor. The journalistic mind,
naturally, was impressed by the dramatic way in which Einstein’s signature
had arrived. Henceforth, the manifesto was called the Einstein-Russell (or vice
versa) manifesto. At the beginning of the meeting a good deal of scepticism
and indi?erence and some out and out hostility was shown by the press. As
the meeting continued, the journalists appeared to become sympathetic and
even approving, with the exception of one American journalist who felt
a?ronted for his country by something I said in reply to a question. The
meeting ended after two and a half hours with enthusiasm and high hope of
the outcome of the call to scientists to hold a conference.
When it was all over, however, and we had returned to our ?at at Millbank
where we were spending the weekend, reaction set in. I recalled the horrid
fact that in making various remarks about the signatories I had said that
Professor Rotblat came from Liverpool. Although he himself had not seemed
to notice the slip, I felt ashamed. The incident swelled to immense propor-
tions in my mind. The disgrace of it prevented me from even speaking of it.
When we walked to the news hoardings outside of Parliament to see if the
evening papers had noted the meeting and found it heralded in banner
headlines, I still could not feel happy. But worse was to come. I learned that I
had omitted Professor Max Born’s name from the list of signatories, had,
even, said that he had refused to sign. The exact opposite was the truth. He
had not only signed but had been most warm and helpful. This was a serious
blunder on my part, and one that I have never stopped regretting. By the time
the autobiography of bertrand russell 550that I had learned of my mistake it was too late to rectify the error, though I at
once took, and have since taken, every means that I could think of to set the
matter straight. Professor Born himself was magnanimous and has continued
his friendly correspondence with me. As in the case of most of the other
signatories the attempt and achievement of the manifesto took precedence
over personal feelings.
Word continued to pour in of the wide news coverage all over the world of
the proclamation of the manifesto. Most of it was favourable. My spirits rose.
But for the moment I could do nothing more to forward the next step in
opposition to nuclear armament. I had to devote the next few weeks to family
matters. During the dreadful week before the proclamation when the tele-
phone was not ringing about that subject it was ringing to give me most
distressing news about my elder son’s illness. I now had to devote all my
mind to that and to moving my family for the summer to our new house in
North Wales. The latter had been painted and refurbished during our absence
under the kind auspices of Rupert and Elizabeth Crawshay-Williams. The
necessary new furnishing to augment what we had bought from the estate
of the former tenant had been bought in London during ?ve afternoons at
the end of June. So all was more or less ready for us. We went there to prepare
for the coming of the three grandchildren as soon as possible. I was glad
to escape from London. Most people seem to think of me as an urban indi-
vidual, but I have, in fact, spent most of my life in the country and am far
happier there than in any city known to me. But, having settled the children
with the nurse who had for some years taken care of them at Richmond, I had
to journey to Paris again for another World Government Conference. It was
held in the Cité Universitaire and the meetings proved interesting. There were
various parties in connection with it, some o?cial and some less so. One
was at the Quai d’Orsay. At one, a cocktail party held in the house of the
great couturière Schiaparelli, I went out into the garden where I was quickly
surrounded by a group of women who thought that women should do
something special to combat nuclear warfare. They wished me to support
their plans. I am entirely in favour of anyone doing what they can to combat
nuclear warfare, but I have never been able to understand why the sexes
should not combat it together. In my experience, fathers, quite as much as
mothers, are concerned for the welfare of their young. My wife was standing
on a balcony above the garden. Suddenly she heard my voice rise in
anguished tones: ‘But, you see, I am not a mother!’ Someone was dispatched
at once to rescue me.
After this Paris conference at the end of July, we returned to Richmond for
another congress. The Association of Parliamentarians for World Government
had planned in June to hold a congress for both Eastern and Western scien-
tists and others if they could manage it during the ?rst days of August. They,
at home and abroad 551as I did, believed that the time had come for communists and non-
communists to work together. I had taken part in their deliberations and was
to speak at the ?rst meeting. Three Russians came from the Moscow Academy
as well as other people, particularly scientists, from many parts of the world.
The Russians were led by Academician Topchiev of whom I was later to see
much and whom I grew to respect and greatly like. This was the ?rst time
since the war that any Russian Communists had attended a conference in the
West and we were all exceedingly anxious to have the meetings go well. In
the main they did so. But there was a short time when, at a committee
meeting towards the end of the second day, the Russians could not come to
agreement with their Western colleagues. The organisers telephoned me and
asked if I could do anything to soothe matters. Fortunately agreement was
managed. And at the ?nal meeting I was able to read the resolutions of the
conference as having been reached unanimously. Altogether, the conference
augured well for co-operation. I could return to Wales for a few weeks of
real holiday with the happy feeling that things were at last moving as one
would wish.
Naturally, all work did not stop even during the holiday. I had already been
considering with Professors Rotblat and Powell how we could implement
the scientists’ manifesto which had called for a conference of scientists
to consider all the matters concerning and allied to the nuclear dangers.
Professor Joliot-Curie, who was himself too ill to take active part in our plans,
encouraged us at long distance. We were fairly sure by this time of being able
to get together a good group of scientists of both East and West.
In the early days of preparing the manifesto, I had hoped that I might be
supported in it by the Indian scientists and Government. At the beginning of
Nehru’s visit to London in February, 1955, my hope of it soared. Nehru
himself had seemed most sympathetic. I lunched with him and talked with
him at various meetings and receptions. He had been exceedingly friendly.
But when I met Dr Bhabha, India’s leading o?cial scientist, towards the end
of Nehru’s visit, I received a cold douche. He had profound doubts about
any such manifesto, let alone any such conference as I had in mind for the
future. It became evident that I should receive no encouragement from
Indian o?cial scienti?c quarters. After the successful promulgation of the
manifesto, however, Nehru’s more friendly attitude prevailed. With the
approval and help of the Indian Government, it was proposed that the ?rst
conference between Western and Eastern scientists be held in New Delhi in
January, 1957.
Throughout the early part of 1956, we perfected, so far as we could, our
plans for the conference. By the middle of the year we had sent o? invitations
over my name to about sixty scientists. But 1956 was a year of bits and pieces
for me, taken up chie?y by broadcasts and articles. An endless and pleasant
the autobiography of bertrand russell 552stream of old friends and new acquaintances came and went. We decided to
sell our Richmond house and move permanently to North Wales. We kept,
however, as a pied à terre in London, our ?at in Millbank, with its wonderful
view of the river in which I delighted. Later, we were turned out of this ?at
for the modernisation of Millbank. Politically, I took part in numberless
meetings concerned with a variety of a?airs, some to do with the troubles
in Cyprus, some to do with World Government. (The World Government
Association gave a dinner in my honour in February at the House of Commons.
I have never felt sure how many of the people at the dinner knew that it had
been announced as a dinner in my honour. At any rate, some of the speeches
might have turned my head happily if only I could have believed them.) I was
especially concerned with a campaign about the imprisonment of Morton
Sobell in the United States.
At the time of the Rosenbergs’ trial and death (one is tempted to say
assassination) in 1951, I had paid, I am ashamed to say, only cursory atten-
tion to what was going on. Now, in 1956, in March, my cousin Margaret
Lloyd brought Mrs Sobell, Morton Sobell’s mother, to see me. Sobell had been
kidnapped by the United States Government from Mexico to be brought to
trial in connection with the Rosenberg case. He had been condemned, on the
evidence of a known perjurer, to thirty years’ imprisonment, of which he had
already served ?ve. His family was trying to obtain support for him, and his
mother had come to England for help. Several eminent people in America had
already taken up cudgels on his behalf, but to no avail. People both here and
in the United States appeared to be ignorant of his plight and what had led up
to it. I remember talking of the case with a well-known and much admired
Federal Court Judge. He professed complete ignorance of the case of Morton
Sobell and was profoundly shocked by what I told him of it. But I noted that
he afterwards made no e?ort to get at the facts, much less to do anything to
remedy them. The case seemed to me a monstrous one and I agreed to do all I
could to call people’s attention to it. A small society had already been formed
in London to do this, and they agreed to help me. I wrote letters to the papers
and articles on the matter. One of my letters contained the phrase ‘a posse of
terri?ed perjurers’, which pleased me and annoyed those who did not agree
with me. I was inundated by angry letters from Americans and others deny-
ing my charges and asking irately how I could be so bold as to call American
justice into question. A few letters came from people, including members of
the above-mentioned London group, who agreed with me, though no one in
England, so far as I know, upheld my point of view publicly. I was generally
and often venomously charged with being anti-American, as I often have
been when I have criticised adversely any Americans or anything American.
I do not know why, since I have spent long periods in that country and
have many friends there and have often expressed my admiration of various
at home and abroad 553Americans and American doings. Moreover, I have married two Americans.
However – ten years later it had come to be generally agreed that the case
against Morton Sobell did not hold water. The Court of Appeals pronounced
publicly on the case in 1962–63. On reading the judges’ verdict, I under-
stood them to say that it was not worth granting Sobell a new trial. On
appealing for advice from Sobell’s defence lawyers on my interpretation of
the verdict, I was informed: ‘It was terrible, though not quite as crude as
you’d imagined.’ The defence lawyers had argued that ‘Ethel Rosenberg’s
constitutional Fifth-Amendment rights had been violated during the trial,
and that this had been fully established in a subsequent Supreme Court deci-
sion, known as the “Grunewald” decision. This decision indicated that Ethel
Rosenberg had been entitled to a new trial; and since her innocence would
have established her husband’s and Sobell’s, they too were entitled to new
trials . . . The Rosenbergs, alas, were no longer around, but Sobell should
have his day in court.’ Although his family continue their long, brave ?ght to
obtain freedom for him, Morton Sobell remains in prison.
Early in 1947 I had said in the House of Lords that in America ‘any person
who favours the United Nations is labelled as a dangerous “Red”’. I was
alarmed by such uncritical anti-communism, especially as it was adopted
increasingly by organisations purporting to be liberal. For this reason I felt
obliged, early in 1953, to resign from the American Committee for Cultural
Freedom. I remained Honorary President of the International Congress for
Cultural Freedom. Three years later I was sent the proof of a book called Wa s
Justice Done? The Rosenberg–Sobell Case by Malcolm Sharp, Professor of Law at the
University of Chicago. It made it quite clear to me, and I should have thought
to anyone, that there had been a miscarriage of justice. I denounced in the
press the hysteria and police-state techniques which had been used against
the Rosenbergs and Sobell. The response of the American Committee for
Cultural Freedom seems even more absurd in the light of the evidence which
has mounted during the intervening years than it seemed at the time. ‘There
is no evidence whatsoever’, the American Committee pronounced, ‘that the
Federal Bureau of Investigation committed atrocities or employed thugs in
the Rosenberg case. There is no support whatever for your charge that Sobell,
an innocent man, was the victim of political hysteria. There is no ground
whatever for your contention that either Sobell or the Rosenbergs were con-
demned on the word of perjurers, terri?ed or unterri?ed . . . Your remarks
on American judicial procedure, the analogy you draw between the tech-
nique of the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the policy [sic] methods of
Nazi Germany or Stalin’s Russia, constitute a major disservice to the cause of
freedom and democracy.’ Having learned that the American branch approved
of cultural freedom in Communist countries but not elsewhere, I resigned
from the Congress for Cultural Freedom.
the autobiography of bertrand russell 554But in the summer of 1956 things seemed to be moving in our direc-
tion so far as the proposed conference of scientists was concerned. Then, in
October, two misfortunes overtook the world: the ?rst was the Hungarian
Revolt and its suppression;
2
the second was the Suez a?air. In relation to the
latter I felt shocked, as I said publicly, and sickened by our Government’s
machinations, military and other. I welcomed Gaitskell’s speech, dry and late
in coming though it was, because it said more or less o?cially a number of
things that should have been said. But the loss of in?uence in international
a?airs which Great Britain must su?er in consequence of this ill-advised Suez
exploit seemed to me well-nigh irreparable. In any case, it was obviously
impossible to take the Western participants in the conference by the round-
about route then necessary to arrive in India in January 1957. So we had to
re-plan our next move.
The problem was how the work was to be carried out and where such a
conference should be held and, above all, how it could be ?nanced. I felt very
sure that the conference should not be bound by the tenets of any established
body and that it should be entirely neutral and independent; and the other
planners thought likewise. But we could ?nd no individual or organisation in
England willing, if able, to ?nance it and certainly none willing to do so with
no strings attached. Some time before, I had received a warm letter of appro-
bation for what I was doing from Cyrus Eaton in America. He had o?ered
to help with money. Aristotle Onassis, the Greek shipping magnate, had also
o?ered to help if the conference were to take place at Monte Carlo. Cyrus
Eaton now con?rmed his o?er if the conference were to be held at his
birthplace, Pugwash in Nova Scotia. He had held other sorts of conferences
there of a not wholly dissimilar character. We agreed to the condition. Plans
went ahead fast under the guidance of Professors Rotblat and Powell. They
were greatly helped by Dr Burhop and, then and later, by Dr Patricia Lindop,
a physicist of St Bartholomew’s Medical College. Her informed and dedi-
cated devotion to the causes of peace and co-operation among scientists
was, I found, comparable even to Professor Rotblat’s. She managed her
work, her children and household and the scientists with apparently carefree
grace and tact. And the ?rst conference took place in early July, 1957, at
Pugwash.
I was unable to go to this ?rst conference because of my age and ill health.
A large part of my time in 1957 was devoted to various medical tests to
determine what was the trouble with my throat. In February, I had to go into
hospital for a short time to ?nd out whether or not I had cancer of the throat.
The evening that I went in I had a debate over the ??? with Abbot Butler of
Downside which I much enjoyed, and I think he did also. The incident went
o? as pleasantly as such a trying performance could do and it was discovered
