conclusively that I did not have cancer. But what did I have? And so the tests
at home and abroad 555continued and I continued to have to live on baby’s food and other such
pabulum.
Since that time I have made several journeys abroad, though none so long
as that to Pugwash. I ?ght shy of longer journeys partly because I fear if I go
to one country people in other countries who have pressed me to go there
will be a?ronted. The only way around this, for one who is not an o?cial
personage, is to renounce distant travels. In 1958, however, I journeyed to a
Pugwash conference in Austria. I stayed on after the meetings and, with my
wife, made a journey by motor car. We drove along the Danube to Durnstein
which I had wished to see ever since my boyhood delight in Richard Coeur
de Lion. I was greatly impressed by the magni?cent bleak grandeur of Melk
on its blu? about the river and by the beauty of its library. Then we drove in a
large circle through the mountains back to Vienna. The air was delicious and
spicy. It seemed like a journey into the story books of my youth, both in the
countryside, which is that of fairy books, and in the kindness and simplicity
and gaiety of the people. Above one little village there was a great lime tree
where the villagers gathered to gossip of an evening and on Sunday. It was a
magical tree in a magical meadow, calm and sweet and full of peace. Once,
as we drove along a narrow lane beside a dashing stream at the foot of
a mountain, we were held up by a landslide. Great trunks of ?r trees were
piled up across the road. We stopped, wondering how to turn or to pass it.
Suddenly, men and women appeared, as if sprung from the ground, from the
nearby farms and set to work, laughing and joking, to move the obstruction.
In a trice, it seemed to me, the road was free and we were being waved on by
smiling people.
But to return to Pugwash – I was kept in close touch by letter and tele-
phone with the proceedings of the ?rst conference and was pleased with
what I heard. We had decided that not only physicists but biological and
social scientists should be invited to attend. There were twenty-two par-
ticipants in all – from the United States, the Soviet Union, China, Poland,
Australia, Austria, Canada, France, Great Britain, and Japan. The meetings
were carried on in both English and Russian. It pleased me especially that it
showed that real co-operation such as we had hoped, could be achieved
among scientists of extremely divergent ‘ideologies’ and apparently opposing
scienti?c as well as other views.
The conference was called the Pugwash Conference of Scientists and for
the sake of continuity the movement has continued to be identi?ed by the
name Pugwash. It established among other things a ‘Continuing Committee’
of ?ve members of which I was the Chairman to organise further confer-
ences. More important, it established a form that future conferences followed.
A number of plenary meetings were held at which important papers were
read. There were a greater number of meetings of the small committees set
the autobiography of bertrand russell 556up at the start, at which particular aspects of the general subjects were dis-
cussed and decided. Most important of all, it was held in an atmosphere
of friendliness. Perhaps the unique characteristic of this and subsequent
Pugwash Conferences was the fact that the members consorted with each
other in their spare time as well as during the scheduled meetings and grew
to know each other as human beings rather than merely as scientists of this or
that potentially inimical belief or nation. This most important characteristic
was in large part made possible by the astute understanding by Cyrus Eaton
of the situation and what we wished to accomplish and by his tactful
hospitality.
As I was not present, I shall not attempt to describe in detail the action or
?ndings of this or any of the other conferences. Professor Rotblat compiled
an excellent and comprehensive history of this and the following seven con-
ferences that were held up to the time of its publication in 1962. Su?ce it to
say here, that there were three committees at the ?rst conference: (1) on the
hazards arising from the use of atomic energy; (2) on the control of nuclear
weapons, which outlined the general objectives of disarmament which sub-
sequent conferences discussed in detail; and (3) on the social responsibilities
of scientists. The ?ndings of the ?rst, as Professor Rotblat points out, probably
comprise the ?rst agreement reached between scientists of East and West on
the e?ects of nuclear tests. The third committee summarised its ?ndings in
eleven items of common belief which became, little more than a year later,
the basis of what is known as the ‘Vienna Declaration’. This ?rst Pugwash
conference published a statement that was formally endorsed by the Soviet
Academy of Sciences and warmly welcomed in China, but less publicised and
more slowly in the West.
The Continuing Committee ?rst met in London in December, 1957, and
a further and similar conference, again made possible by Cyrus Eaton, was
held at Lac Beauport in Canada in the spring of 1958. Then came a more
ambitious endeavour: a large conference in September, 1958, at Kitzbühel in
Austria. It was made possible through the good o?ces of Professor Hans
Thirring, under the auspices of the Theodor-Koerner Foundation. It was
followed by meetings held in Vienna. At the former conferences no press or
observers had been permitted to attend. At this third conference not only
were observers present but they included members of the families of the
participants. At the great meetings at Vienna the press was in evidence. At the
meeting in the Austrian Academy of Sciences on the morning of September
20th the Vienna Declaration was promulgated. It was a statement that had
been accepted with only one abstention by all the members of the conference
at Kitzbühel and it forms, as Professor Rotblat has said, the credo of the Pug-
wash movement. It is too long to be included here, but may be found in his
history. The meeting was opened by the President of Austria, Dr Adolf Schaef,
at home and abroad 557for the conference had been given a very generous welcome by the Austrian
State. Amongst others of both East and West I spoke in my capacity of presi-
dent of the movement and chairman of the Continuing Committee. It seemed
to me an impressive and unforgettable formal occasion. In my speech I
recalled my grandfather’s speech at a Congress (also in Vienna) during the
Crimean War in which he spoke in favour of peace, but was overruled.
Following the great meeting, we attended the President’s lunch in the Alter
Hof. Then came an important meeting when ten of the participants in the
conference addressed ten thousand people at the Wiener Stadthalle – but this
I could not attend.
The most obvious achievement of the Pugwash movement has been the
conclusion, for which it was largely responsible, of the partial Testban Treaty
which forbade nuclear tests above ground in peace time. I, personally, was
not and am not happy about this partial ban. It seems to me to be, as I should
expect it to be, a soother of consciences and fears that should not be soothed.
At the same time, it is only a slight mitigation of the dangers to which we
are all exposed. It seemed to me more likely to be a hindrance than a help
towards obtaining the desired total ban. Nevertheless, it showed that East
and West could work together to obtain what they wished to obtain and
that the Pugwash movement could be e?ective when and where it desired to
be. It was rather a give-away of the bona ?des of the various ‘Disarmament
Conferences’ whose doings we have watched with some scepticism for a
good many years.
The Pugwash movement now seems to be ?rmly established and part
of the respectable progress of scienti?c relations with international a?airs.
I myself have had little to do directly with its progress in the last years.
My interest turned to new plans towards persuading peoples and Govern-
ments to banish war and in particular weapons of mass extermination,
?rst of all nuclear weapons. In the course of these fresh endeavours, I felt
that I had become rather disreputable in the eyes of the more conservative
scientists. The Pugwash movement held a great meeting of scientists from
all over the world in London in September, 1962. I was to speak about
the founding of the movement and I warned my friends that I might be
hissed – as I was fully convinced that I should be. I was deeply touched
by being given a standing ovation when I rose to speak which included,
I was told, all the participants, all, that is, save Lord Hailsham. He was pres-
ent in his capacity as the Queen’s Minister of Science. He was personally, I
think, friendly enough to me, but, weighed down by o?ce, he sat tight. That
was the last occasion on which I have taken public part in a Pugwash
conference.
the autobiography of bertrand russell 558LETTERS
From Bernard Berenson
I Tatti
Settignano
Florence
March 29, 1945
Dear Bertie
Mary died the 23d, & as I know that she remained very fond of you to the
end, I wish you to hear of her end. It was a liberation, for she su?ered
distressingly, & increasingly in recent years.
Not many months ago, I read out to her yr. article in Horizon about America.
It delighted her & me as well.
Of other publications of yours we have seen nothing in years. We have
been cut o? from the Western World for a good ?ve years. I learned with
pleasure that you had returned to your Cambridge & to Trinity. It makes me
believe that we may meet again some day. It will have to be here, as I doubt
whether I shall get to England soon.
You must have a grown up son by now. What of him?
With a?ectionate remembrance.
Sincerely yours
B.B.
Hotel Europa e Britannia
Venezia
June 1, 54 till July
Dear Bertie
I hear from Mrs Sprigge that you would like to revisit I Tatti. It would
give me real pleasure to see you again, and your wife whom I remember.
I propose your coming for ten days or a fortnight at any time between
Dec. I and April I. The other months we are either away or too crowded &
I want you to myself. For many years I have been reading what you
published about things human, feeling as if nobody else spoke for me as
you do.
Do not delay, for in these weeks I shall be reaching my 90th year & le Grand
Peut-être may want me any day.
With a?ectionate remembrance.
Ever yrs
B.B.
at home and abroad 559I Tatti
Settignano
Florence
July 12 ’54
Dear Bertie
Thank you for Nightmares. I have enjoyed yr. wit, your evocation, your
Galgenhumors. Continuez!
Yes, any time between Jan. 10 & March 1 would suit me best. I should be
happy if you could stay a fortnight.
Sincerely yours
B.B.
P.S. Later, you will give me precise dates. B.B.
I Tatti
Settignano
Florence
Nov. 16, ’54
Dear Bertie
Your note of the 12th grieves me. I looked forward to seeing you, the
last of my near-contemporaries, & one with whom I have so much in
common.
Unless work chains you to London you could carry it on at least as well
here as at home. I never see guests except at meals, or if they want to join me
in my now so short walks.
If Jan. 15–March 15 are impossible is there another time that would suit
you better.
Could you come in the summer? We three are at Vallombrosa in a paradise
but rustic, & far less roomy & comfy.
Incline yr. heart toward my proposal.
Sincerely
B.B.
P.S. I never shall cross the Alps again. London, Paris, New York etc. are far, far
too tiring for me now.
Saniet Volpi-Tripoli
May 8, 55
Dear Bertie
Of course I knew you were in Rome, & I had a faint hope that you might
?nd time to spend a day or two with me in Florence. I was disappointed that
you could not make it.
Let me urge you again to come for a fortnight or so any time between Nov.
15 & March 15, preferably Jan. 15 to March 15. You could work as well as at
the autobiography of bertrand russell 560home for I never see guests except at meals & evenings – if they care to keep
me company after dinner.
It would be a joy to live over the remembered days of so long ago. Of your
wife too I retain pleasant remembrance & should be happy to renew our
acquaintance.
Do you really hope that disaster can be averted? I fear experiments can not
be avoided, & damn the consequences.
Sincerely yrs.
B.B.
I wrote the following soon after going to live in Richmond in the house which I shared with my
son and his family.
May 12th, 1950
I have been walking alone in the garden of Pembroke Lodge, and it has
produced a mood of almost unbearable melancholy. The Government is
doing great works, all bad. Half the garden is incredibly lovely: a mass of
azaleas and bluebells and narcissus and blossoming may trees. This half they
have carefully fenced in with barbed wire (I crawled through it), for fear the
public should enjoy it. It was incredibly like Blake’s Garden of Love, except
that the ‘priests’ were bureaucrats.
I su?er also from entering into the lives of John and Susan. They were born
after 1914, and are therefore incapable of happiness. Their three children are
lovely: I love them and they like me. But the parents live their separate lives, in
separate prisons of nightmare and despair. Not on the surface; on the surface
they are happy. But beneath the surface John lives in suspicious solitude,
unable to believe that anyone can be trusted, and Susan is driven beyond
endurance by sharp stabs of sudden agony from contemplation of this dread-
ful world. She ?nds relief in writing poetry, but he has no relief. I see that their
marriage will break up, and that neither will ever ?nd happiness or peace. At
moments I can shut out this terrifying intuitive knowledge, but I love them
both too much to keep on thinking about them on a level of mundane com-
mon sense. If I had not the horrible Cassandra gift of foreseeing tragedy, I
could be happy here, on a surface level. But as it is, I su?er. And what is wrong
with them is wrong with all the young throughout the world. My heart aches
with compassion for the lost generation – lost by the folly and greed of the
generation to which I belong. It is a heavy burden, but one must rise above it.
Perhaps, by su?ering to the limit, some word of comfort may be revealed.
To Charles W. Stewart, the illustrator of my Nightmares of Eminent Persons. I longed to
?nd a Daumier or, better still, a Goya to point up the savage irony of this book as well as the
warning contained in my Human Society in Ethics and Politics.
at home and abroad 56120 Nov. 1953
Dear Mr Stewart
Thank you for the roughs. I like them very much and shall be glad to have
you do the pictures. I note what you say about Stalin and am assuming that
the picture will be somewhat di?erent from the rough. I particularly like the
existentialist’s nightmare and the one in Zahatopolk where the lady is being
burnt. In the other Zahatopolk picture I like it all except that I think the valley
ought to be more smiling and full of ?owers, but perhaps it will be so when
you have ?nished the picture. In the picture of Dr Southport Vulpes I suppose
the things in the sky are aeroplanes, and I think it might be a good thing if
they were somewhat larger and more emphatic. I quite agree to your sugges-
tion of a single heading for every other nightmare, and I have no objection to
having Vulpes put between Eisenhower and Acheson as you suggest. I am
looking forward with pleasure to a picture of the quarrel between the two
ladies in Faith and Mountains. As this story is at the printers, I am sending
you a spare typescript which, however, I should like to have back when you
have ?nished with it.
I am engaged on another book, not of stories, but on ethics and politics, to
be called Human Society: Diagnosis & Prognosis. I want in this book to have three
pictures, or one picture in three parts, like a triptych, illustrating the uses of
intelligence in the past, present and future. If you feel inclined to undertake
this and if Stanley Unwin is agreeable, I shall be very glad. Any time within
the next four months would do. I should like all three as savage and bitter as
possible.
I return the roughs herewith.
Yours sincerely
Bertrand Russell
From Ion Braby about The Good Citizen’s Alphabet
Queensland
St Nicholas-at-Wade
near Birchington, Kent
March 31 1953
Dear Lord Russell
Thank you so much for the book. It is delightful. I am not sure whether the
drawings are worthy of the text or the text worthy of the drawings. In either
event they could hardly be better. I think ???????, ?????? and ????? are my
favourites, but I am very fond of ??????, ????????? and ???????? and
many more. And, also, of the opening address (I feel that is the word) and its
illustrations. I am sure you and the artist will be due for a triple dose of
hemlock, for you will be accused of corrupting not only the young but the
middle-aged and elderly too – and corrupting the latter two is very wrong, as
the autobiography of bertrand russell 562they have less time to recover. Anyway, I am very glad to be subverted by it;
thank you again.
I sent my book o? to The Bodley Head at the end of the week before last,
and hope to get an answer soon. I need hardly say once more how much I
appreciate your interest and help.
With best wishes
Yours sincerely
Ion
From Rupert Crawshay-Williams
Castle Yard
Portmeirion
Penrhyndeudraeth
Merioneth
August 1, 1953
Dear Bertie
I was so delighted by your story – and especially as I read most of it in a
remarkably dingy cubicle in a Divinity student’s hostel in Dublin – that I
determined to write you a letter long enough for comment on the particular
bits I liked; and I’ve been putting this o? – largely because my holiday in
Ireland did not do as a holiday is supposed to, but somehow put me into a
state of mind in which all my work was worse – and much slower – than it
had been before. (But this may have been a bit because revising, and particu-
larly cutting down, is so much more boring than the actual working out
of ideas.)
Anyway Faith and Mountains is certainly my favourite of all your stories so
far. I suppose this is partly because its theme is a cup of tea just up my street.
But I think you have worked it out beautifully, with just the right amount –
not too much – of pastiche and exaggeration. The pseudo-scienti?c plausibil-
ity of the two opposing doctrines is delightful, especially in the light of
Mr Wagthorne’s later point about man’s ability to believe what afterwards
appears to have been nonsense. Incidentally, that whole paragraph on p. 43
builds up with beautifully timed comic e?ect to all the names beginning
with M. The timing of your e?ects in general – for instance, the moments
you choose for understatement or for sharp statement – is now technically
most e?cient. (The Professor’s opening speech at the grand meeting; the
conciseness of the paragraph at the beginning of Chapter VII in which his
future is outlined – nice bit about Tensing!; ‘And with that they fell into each
other’s arms’.)
Also there are a nice lot of sly digs put over with a straight face (which is
one of your ?nger-prints, of course): The Magnets’ dismissal of mere brawn;
the believers ?nally remaining in out of the way suburbs. And I liked the
at home and abroad 563conceits about the very narrow valley and about Mr Thorney’s use of a
sextant. And the ??? pastiche, with its ‘shallow certainty’ and ‘deeper sources
of wisdom’ and ‘the coldly critical intellect’.
Your ‘message’ of course is highly commendable; and as a matter of fact
Zachary’s answer to his father at the end is most concise and decisive. But, for
me, even more decisive – because it made me laugh out loud (and also
Elizabeth, who sends her love and entire agreement) – is the last paragraph.
You have caught so neatly and ludicrously the dingy commonplaceness of so
many hymns. (Now I come to think of it, part of the e?ect comes from the
slight confusion of thought between third and fourth lines: diseases of the
chest and Makes our muscles grow.) And then comes – perfectly correctly –
the word ‘Sublimities’ in the last line.
I was glad to see, by the way, your emphasis, in a review in the Sunday Times
some weeks ago, upon the role of power politics rather than ideologies – and
also your re-emphasis upon the way in which science and scienti?c method
have conditioned (all that is ‘best’ in) Western Values. It is maddening the
way in which the opposite ‘soupy’ belief is accepted even by most unsoupy
people.
My word ‘soupy’ was used the other day – in exactly my sense – by a
novelist called Angus Wilson when reviewing a book on Georges Sand in the
Observer. I very much hope this is a sign that it is spreading; Angus Wilson is I
believe a friend of Cyril Connolly’s to whom I did once introduce the word.
The names Tomkins and Merrow (together) ring a faint bell in my mind.
Should it be a loud bell, and should I recognise it?
Yours ever
Rupert
It’s now Sunday, and I’ve just remembered that the local post o?ce box
won’t take large envelopes. So I’ll send the MS back to-morrow.
From J. B. S. Haldane
University College London
Department of Biometry
5th November, 1953
Dear Russell
Thank you very much for your information. I have, of course, altered the
passage to bring it into line with the facts. In my old age I am getting rather
interested in animal behaviour, and have even done something to ‘decode’
the bees’ language (of which a fair account is to be found in Ribband’s The
Behaviour and Social Life of Honeybees). As you know, bees returning from a rich
source of food dance. The class of all dances is a propositional function with
four variables, which may be rendered
the autobiography of bertrand russell 564‘There is a source of food smelling of A, requiring B workers, at a distance C in
direction D.’
A is indicated by demonstration, B, C, and D symbolically. I have brought
a little precision into the translation of the symbols for C. The paper will
be sent you in due course. If, however, bees are given honey vertically
above them they cannot communicate this fact, though they dance in an
irregular manner. There are undanceable truths, like the ine?able name
of God.
The political system of bees, discovered by Lindauer, is even more surpris-
ing. He has records of a debate as to a nest site which lasted for ?ve days.
You will perhaps correct me if I am incorrect in describing a propositional
function as a class of propositions. If one comes to them ‘from outside’ as in
the observation of bees, this seems a natural way of looking at the matter.
Meanwhile various Germans (not v. Frisch and Lindauer) are plugging the
?xity of animal behaviour in a rather Nazi manner (v. reprint by my wife).
The word ‘imprinting’, due to Thorpe, is used for long-lasting changes in
conduct due to a juvenile experience (e.g. the following of Spalding by
chickens).
Yours sincerely
J. B. S. Haldane
From H. McHaigh Esq.
87 Orewa Rd.
Auckland, N.Z.
17/vii/’51
Dear Sir
I had the pleasure of lecturing you last year: while you were in Sydney.
But, one evening this week you were closer: here, in Auckland, I heard your
voice – reproduced from 1.Y.A. Auck. Radio broadcast.
Now I understand how, or why, the ‘Bulletin’ artist was able to depict so
terribly the vile personality shewn in that weekly’s columns – labelled with
your name: as well as seeing you in the ?esh, he must have heard you speak.
Frequently, while the radio is turned on, I have wondered whether mem-
bers of Broadcasting Boards have ears; or, whether, having ears, they have a
grain of good taste amongst them. But, as soon as the announcer named you
as the person emitting those dreadfully disgusting sounds, I knew that, ears
or no ears, those men are utterly careless about in?icting pain – and about
disclosing the shocking ruin that (as in your case) a human being can make
