Bertrand Russell 1872-1970.
Some book reviews by Raeto Collin West, 'Rerevisionist'.
BR's publication date order. These reviews have been separated from big-lies.org/reviews (that file is too large).
v. 1 April 2024
New (June 17 2023
) summary of my opinion of Russell's social theories. For the avoidance of doubt, I take the view that Russell adopted the family tradition of working for the admittance of Jews into Britain, and in so doing helped them cause the 'Great War', which Russell deplored, putting the blame on non-Jews, human nature, the impulsive need for excitement, and so on. He continued to work for Jews in Russia, and for the Second World War. He worked for Jewish science frauds and the prolongation of Jewish 'social science' and 'religious' frauds, if they can even be called that. To put it simply, he was a gullible clown, unable even in extreme cases of violence to put the blame where it belonged. And his philosophical and mathematical work accomplished little.
It's saddening to read his autobiography: He is unblithely unaware of the huge evils of Victorian times, such as the viciousness against India and China, and the US Civil War horrors. He shows little grasp of the reach of aristocratic families in Europe and its provinces, such as Russia and the Americas. His work on nuclear weapons is now clearly entangled with Jewish lies. His work on Vietnam (during which he was corralled by Jews, though to what extent is not known by me)—as usual, Jewish concealment was as effective as they could make it. Possibly he was used as a ridiculable front in the worldwide dislike of American atrocities.
My revisionist review of Russell's life and work: Bertrand Russell: Dupe of Jews which is not in this page, but included in the 'nuke-lies' part of my site.
1952 film of Russell at home (black and white; 30 minutes; opens in a new tab). Disappointingly, shows Russell aged almost 80, in a staged conversation at home in (I think) Richmond—film being expensive and needing lighting and several cameras—in which it's clear Russell knew nothing of Jewish ambitions, the 'French Revolution', the slow perversions of thought against Germany in Britain and Britain in Germany, the 1913 Federal Reserve and 1914, Jewish mass murder under 'Socialism', Hitler, US ignorance, 'nuclear weapons' and other Jewish frauds, and many other topics. Russell regards 'Asia' as requiring to shoulder its responsibilities. He had no idea that Jews were and are 'supremacists'. He lived before the vast population expansions of black Africans, and the practical implementation of Coudenhove-Kalergi's plan, of which he was aware.
It doesn't say much for Victorian historians that they left huge questions over the 'French Revolution', as Russell demonstrates with his comment (for example in Dear Bertrand Russell), on inevitable Bonapartism. He was as bad on the USA Civil War, and Franco-Prussian War, and of course Jewish assassinations by anarchists and others. Sinn Fein is another.
Russell shows his unawareness of Jewish maleficence in his attitude the Jewish view of 'truth'. In his 1918 book Roads to Freedom, essentially a propaganda piece for Jewish ideas on harming the white world to make leading Jews feel happier, he wrote:–
There's more in the same sense, which might have been written by a Jew in 'Tikkun Olam' mode combining self-praise with discussion of how best to use the worthless 'goyim'.
And here he is published in 1973, in interview with Ralph Miliband, a 'Belgian' Jew.
RUSSELL: Oh yes, I’ve never seen any reason to change it. I find it very odd, very odd, that when people talk about religion they never enquire whether it is true or not: they only make out that it’s useful. But I don’t think a thing which is false can be useful, because it leads you astray.
'It' is his opinion of religion. He doesn't notice that it can be useful in leading other people astray. Something applied by Jews for thousands of years.
Just another philosopher: 1976 film of Isaiah Berlin interviewed, entitled Why Philosophy Matters. Isaiah Berlin (1909-1997), a 'Jew' of course, was touted as a historian of ideas. The interview shows him puzzling over the meanings of words—it looks very much as though he was uneasy with the English language, reasonably enough for someone who considered himself a Jew from Latvia. We also have an anecdote about the Second World War, in which of course he takes the Jewish view as automatically as possible, though no doubt there's some hesitation. He wrote a long review of Russell's History of Western Philosophy.
German Social Democracy 1896 (lectures. Date corrected!)
Why Men Fight [in US] = Principles of Social Reconstruction 1916, written 1915
Political Ideals 1917 [US only]; 1963 [UK]
Roads to Freedom 1918. Long.
Introduction to Mathematical Philosophy 1919
Practice and Theory of Bolshevism 1920
The Analysis of Mind 1921
The ABC of Atoms 1923
Prospects of Industrial Civilization 1923
The ABC of Relativity 1925
On Education 1926. My plea for Jew-aware education
Sceptical Essays 1928
Marriage and Morals 1929
The Conquest of Happiness 1930 Education and the Social Order 1932
Freedom and Organization 1814-1914 1934.
+ Commentary on Patricia SpenceReligion and Science 1935 (Published by Home University Library)
Which Way to Peace? 1936 First ever Internet upload! Complete text. 30 June 2017. NEW!!
Power: A New Social Analysis 1938
Let the People Think 1941 (Review Aug 2017)
History of Western Philosophy 1945
Extract from History of Western Philosophy: Russell on Jews 1945
Authority and the Individual 1948
The Impact of Science on Society essay collection 1952
Human Society in Ethics and Politics essay collection. Note: Chapter 7, 'Can Religious Faith Cure Our Troubles?' is interesting to show up Jew-naivety in Russell (and in numerous Americans such as Kevin MacDonald). 1954'Why I am not a Christian' and Other Essays essay collection
Portraits from Memory and other essays 1956Common Sense and Nuclear Warfare 1959
My Philosophical Development 1959
Fact and Fiction 1961
[Herbert Gottschalk, eine Biographie 1962]
War Crimes in Vietnam My review of this essay collection 1967
Download entire book here in pdf format. c 50MB
Autobiography (3 vols, 1967, 1968, 1969)
Against the Crime of Silence: Russell International War Crimes Tribunal 1968. My short review
Dear Bertrand Russell: A Selection of His Correspondence with the General Public,1950-68 1969
Rupert Crawshay-Williams: Russell Remembered 1970
Allen Lane book Prevent the Crime of Silence in full 1971 with notes on Penguin Books propaganda and Jew-aware interpretation of Vietnam War. Some, but not much, by Russell who was in his mid-90s at the time
The Collected Stories of Bertrand Russell (1972)
Barry Feinberg: Bertrand Russell's America, 1945-1970 v1 1973; v2 1983?
Ronald W Clark: The Life of Bertrand Russell 1975
Katherine Tait: My Father, Bertrand Russell 1975
Caroline Moorehead: Bertrand Russell: A Life 1992 | Rerevised long update about 10 years later. Jews telling lies and covering up. Includes Schoenman.
BBC on Russell: BBC co-production in 2nd Reputations series; Part 1 2 hours 1998Yours faithfully, Bertrand Russell 2002 | Edited by Ray Perkins Jr
German Social Democracy
1896 lectures, delivered at the LSE, which then was very new while pretending in Jewish style to be old and established. (About twenty years later, Principles of Social Reconstruction was delivered as lectures. Russell seems to have needed claqueurs to help him out.)
Russell's first book; he visited Germany with Alys for 'research', but, unsurprisingly, found only Jewish publications, which outnumbered non-Jewish by a vast margin.
Marxism and Politics by Ralph Miliband, published in 1997.
Note 6 (in the top right) refers to H. Gruber, International Communism in the Era of Lenin, published in New York, 1972.
It's unlikely Russell would even have noticed anything published against Jews.
Review of Bertrand Russell Autobiography. Three volumes first published by Allen & Unwin 1967, 1968, 1969
Reasonably Honest Autobiography, Largely Greeted with Enthusiasm, by a British Aristocrat Torn Between Philosophy, Science, and Nascent Social Sciences. 11 March 2016.
Volume I 1872-1914
Russell was born in 1872; old enough not to have been called up in the 'Great War'. Volume 1 of his Autobiography (with the green jacket design spine, and a black-and-white cover photo by Lotte Meitner-Graf, a copy of which appears in Chomsky's study, and in a 1970s film including Malcolm McDowell) was published by Allen & Unwin, his lifelong publisher. Volume I is 1872-1914; Volume II 1914-1944; Volume III 1944-1967 (from memory) with a 'tailpiece' of 1969. These divisions clearly correspond to milestones in Russell's mental life: the outbreak of the 'Great War', and the supposed invention of nuclear weapons.
There were astounding changes in Russell's lifetime: automobiles and aeroplanes and skyscrapers hardly existed until he was about 40 years old. Underground and tube railways first came to London somewhat earlier. Telephones were rare and valuable. Oil-based plastic polymers were hardly known before 1945. Machine guns and dynamite pre-dated 1900. Their later developments were in time to be misreported by radio, and then television. Russell recognised the power of TV: he thought most people would believe any lie promoted by television.
When this autobiography appeared, flattering blurbs suggested it was remarkably honest. I don't think this is quite true. Russell had many 'relatives'—I don't know the phrase Russell would have used. Not 'extended family'. Probably 'my people'. But there's nothing like a family tree. I think this expands the impression of loneliness in a misleading way.
Russell's longevity reflects on his cultural background. He was not of a temperament to be attracted to Greek and Roman classics; these had their day, but were outdated by Victorian progress. He was hopelessly impractical, not having any empirical scientific skill, though he recognised the importance of science. Such books as Lewis Carroll's and Edward Lear's, Tristram Shandy and The Trumpet Major and War and Peace (later, in English) and the Cambridge Modern History were part of his upbringing and early maturity. Alys Pearsall Smith (his first wife, an American New England Quaker) and Russell ploughed through standard histories together, as Darwin and his wife did. I don't think Russell ever applied scepticism to history: for example, about Nero, or Cromwell, or the Protestant view of the Reformation, or the French Revolution. Before this, his early years in his grandfather's gift-of-Victoria house in Richmond Park were partly spent looking through Prime Minister Russell's library, though L'Art de Verifier des Dates (the only 'art' involved was looking them up) is the only book (I think) he specifically locates there.
All Russell's early years were spent, more or less in isolation, in Richmond Park, with his elder brother Frank, his servants, and elderly relatives, notably an ancient puritanical Scottish grandmother—it's not clear to me which of his parents was her child. As in many European countries, aristocrats carried with them a considerable penumbra of hangers-on. Possibly there was a painful waste of talent: they might have observed the world more than they did. But equally possibly there was not; it's agonising to reflect on the missed opportunities.
Pembroke Lodge still exists, in a state of conversion into tea room with car park, and a huge outdoor poem carved into wood: City of Dreadful Night. Poor Russell is almost elided away by now. He loved the landscape and nature, which he thought of as wild, and described in old age with great vigour.
When Russell was young, Joseph Conrad did not of course exist as part of a more-or-less official literary canon. Shelley was there—Russell read Epipsychidion aloud to Alys in between kissing sessions. Byron furnished materials for Russell on 'Byronic unhappiness'. The really immense historical upheaval at that time was the French Revolution and Napoleon, and the preceding philosophical groundwork, Voltaire, Blake, Swedenborg and so on, but especially Rousseau, who retained an aura of irresponsibly-'romantic' evil in Russell's mind. The simple outline of this historical set of events (including slogans, the terror, and military conquests) adapted itself well to the so-called 'Russian Revolution' of volume 2 of Russell's Autobiography. Russell never had any doubt about this scheme, and for example always called the Jewish-run 'Union of Soviet Socialist Republics' Russia, as though it was simply another nation-state made up of one well-defined nationality.
Russell regarded himself as a triple philosopher-mathematician-social scientist. His philosophical life started largely with his attack on Christianity, in his exercise book labelled 'Greek Exercises'. It's similar to other rationalistic attacks of the time, concentrating fire on falsehood and absurdity. Russell was too young or naive to understand that much of established religion is an income-generating scheme, though he must have been aware of the history of the Reformation as presented in 19th-century England. Anyway, at the end of this process Russell recalls feeling relieved that it was all over. When he finally went 'up' to Cambridge, he says he met only one person who had heard of Draper's History of the Conflict between Religion and Science. Russell claims to have been led into mathematics by his brother's explaining some of mysteries of geometry to him, from Euclid, including the problem of parallel straight lines not meeting. Aged about 18, he was ready for Cambridge, full of promise—the famous Jowett came to visit what there was of his family. (Both his parents died when he was young—too young to remember them). Russell's social science interests started in Volume II; before that, he worked at his Principia Mathematica. He claims to have discovered much of the work of Cantor independently. My own belief is that Cantor and (later) Einstein are flawed. I suspect Russell was well aware of fame and publicity and renown; most of his beliefs were in accordance with ideas currently promoted at the time. One of his 1930s essays, on Tom Paine and Washington and the early views of democracy, Russell states that 'Some worldly wisdom is required even to secure praise for the lack of it.' In Volume I this hardly mattered; Russell's views were not very controversial. But, at least in my view, Russell always had some intellectual timidity: he never dared criticise Freud, for example, in any forthright way.
Russell at Cambridge found Cambridge University life exactly suited to his tastes and abilities. He was sought out by intellectual clubs, was able to talk for the first time in his life, found the buildings beautiful, met Whitehead, and generally expanded. He bought and smoked Fribourg & Treyer's 'Golden Mixture'. He took very long walks. He rode his bike. He became less shy. He liked the ambience of completely free discussion, and never noticed it was much less free than he'd imagined. He made fun of people who tried to popularise. A note that strikes me as discordant is his dislike of the 'Dons'. He wrote prose with purple patches. As with almost all biographies, Russell writes very little on what he actually learned at Cambridge. He gives no summary or account of the influence of mathematical structures on his thinking. Very likely 'propositional functions' are one such thing, but he doesn't explicitly say so. He liked philosophy 'and the curious ways of conceiving the world that the great philosophers offer to the imagination.' His first philosophical ventures led him, following others, to criticisms of Hegel and German Idealism, though not of the assumptions and mind-sets that led to its being favoured.
Russell married (partly because he wanted children) and moved to a newly-built house. He was—I did some comparative calculations—the equivalent of a millionaire now, through inheritance. He was in a position to turn down work he found distasteful: for a short time in 1898 he tried diplomatic work in Paris, but disliked working on a dispute as to whether lobsters legally counted as fish. (Plus ça change ..: the EU had a dispute as to whether carrots count as fruit). It's not quite true to say that Russell was fully absorbed in philosophy and mathematics: his wife Alys spoke on votes for women and similar issues. I found a short essay by her in Nineteenth Century Opinion, taken from The Nineteenth Century of 1877-1901, in a 1951 paperback edited by Michael Goodwin (if you must know) in which she expressed the desire of single wealthy women for work—with the usual implicit restrictions. At the end of his chapter Principia Mathematica Russell wrote 'Few things are more surprising than the rapid and complete victory of this cause women's suffrage] throughout the civilised world.' Russell was impressed (unfavourably) by Philadelphia politics—as a long letter to Graham Wallas in 1896 on 'bossism' and voting fraud shows. (This letter is instructive: Russell provides examples of bosses' voting frauds, purchases of votes, paid fake demonstrators, as he somewhere in his writings comments on the skilled management of bankrupt US railways. He could never, at any time in his life, bring himself to analyse the costs of party politics and the economics of corruption. As he puts it: Americans are unspeakably lazy about everything but their business [and] invent a pessimism, and say things can't be improved). Russell and Alys went to Germany to study 'social democracy' there; the outcome was his very first book German Social Democracy (1896). This set a style for all Russell's social science books: he simply had no idea about Jews, which of course was a standard head-in-the-sand attitude in polite Britain. Probably he simply assumed the vast number of Jewish publications in Germany, and the tiny number of those discussing Jewish influence, must have been a plain reflection of merit. (If you're looking for a full-on criticism of Russell, see Bertrand Russell, dupe of racist Jews.)
Russell's following three books were An Essay on the Foundations of Geometry (1897), A Critical Exposition of the Philosophy of Leibniz (1900), and The Principles of Mathematics (1903). However, Russell doesn't write much about his books, which he often implied came from unconscious thought, as for example in his account of sitting in the parlour of the Beetle and Wedge at Moulsford, wondering what to say about 'our knowledge of the external world'.
One of the attractive characteristics of Russell's Autobiography is its peppering with famous names: G E Moore, J M Keynes, D H Lawrence, G B Shaw, Eddington, Einstein, H G Wells, Malinowski, Sidney and Beatrice 'Webb', as a tiny sample—though arguably some names are chosen for notoriety rather than firm reputation. Russell worked in Cambridge, London—at the time one of the world's largest cities— and his Hindhead house. And he had a large set of women companions, but this fact only emerged later, and is only very slightly present in his Autobiography. In this way, he might have proceeded from the 1890s to the twentieth century and onward, for the rest of his life as a respected academic, reading The Times and hefty Victorian books, with no inkling that other outlooks and forces were designing and plotting.
Woven into his narrative are relatives—often enough, surprising, because of the inevitable limitations of the first-and-surname principle. General Pitt-Rivers was his uncle. Lord Portal, responsible for bomber command (in Volume III) and perhaps therefore the Second World War, was Russell's cousin. The Duke of Bedford was 'head of my family'. And of course Russell had personal friends. Russell's chapters each end with a collection of letters. In Volume I, the final five chapters have far more letters than text, beginning with his life in Paris and dalliance with a diplomatic carrier. And Volume II has far more of his letters than text, many being his own, suggesting his early life had disproportionately the most emotional meaning for him, and that Russia, China, and America between them managed to exhaust him.
Volume II 1914-1944Just a few comments on Russell's attitudes at the time. A run-in with a family doctor caused other family members to tell Russell he ought not to have children, because of the taint of insanity of a relative of Russell's. Russell said people at the time tended to believe overmuch in heredity. Since then, population movements have become so much easier that people if anything are at the opposite extreme, denying all role for genetics—this of course is the official Jewish view since 1945. The point really is that if people are to be ignored as sub- or non-human, as per Jewish orthodoxy, it doesn't matter if there are differences. Similarly with Russell: if you're a secure aristocrat, what do other people matter? Russell assumes all human populations are similar: his book on Power doesn't differentiate in any way between populations, though there are token references in his books on education. This must have had a lot of muting effect on his knowledge of the 'masses', and of Jews vs Russians. Inaccessible populations of southern Africa had been described for 50 or 60 years, but Russell failed to note systematic differences.
Russell was aware of, and discussed in his books, genetics and Darwin. He seems to have veered away from such awareness: a letter in Volume III says all Germans would have been 'sired by Hitler', for example. In a way it's odd, because he himself felt some need for intellectual accomplishment; and yet he was forbidden from reading books in his grandfather's library, and discouraged from rationalist critiques of Christianity.
Russell disliked 'capitalism', but seems to have taken the word and its connotations straight from Marx. Although he was aware of finances, and the power of panics and crashes and so on, his use of 'capitalism' was just like that of all the other 'economists' of the time trying, or pretending, to be critical. Quite apart from money, as far as I recall there is nothing in Russell on economic goods: Can there be too much? Should inventions made in A be allowed into B? Is there some law making some level of 'productivity' ideal? Is there an optimum population? Despite Russell's attempts, I don't think he discovered anything, though some people credit him with 'effective demand' and 'spending out of depression'.
I don't mean newspaper-headline stuff with silly exaggerations, but phrases which look technical and accurate but in practice are not defined at all, or described vaguely. In a time of aggressive propaganda, this is a serious failure, giving no help when it is most needed. 'Capitalism' is a perfect example, a word always used by Russell in a contemptuous manner. And yet, presumably, any large project needs money if there's any sort of money system.
Russell regarded himself as an innovator: he regarded Prospects of Industrial Civilization (1923) as a pioneering work in sociology. No doubt it's partly due to Jews that writers such as Durkheim and Weber are given priority. And perhaps to British writers that Herbert Spencer is ignored. Russell regarded Power as founding a new science, as Adam Smith is regarded as founding economics. Russell considered that Power had been plagiarised by Burnham (in The Managerial Revolution). Russell complained the final chapters of The Scientific Outlook were plagiarised by Aldous Huxley in Brave New World.
Russell was horrified by the 'Great War'. As with most people, he was at the level of calling it an 'outbreak'. His chapter The First War is worth reading, especially by people who have never heard any arguments against that war. He had no analysis of people who wanted war, and why they wanted war, though he implied he'd kept an eye on Sir Edward Grey and others. But his eyes were on average people:
Most of Russell's information came from newspapers, and if newspapers are owned by people who want war, it's simple to fill the pages with war stories. The Bryce Report state propaganda against Germany, and the prolonged leaks of anti-Russian and anti-German and anti-British material into other countries, clearly showed this. Russell did not talk to ordinary people; I've certainly met people who say they didn't want war at the time. Russell believed that pre-war outbreaks of violence (including those attributed to suffragettes) proved that British society unconsciously wanted war; in fact, it's likely that some of the supposed violence by suffragettes was in fact a Jewish false flag. However, the war gave him a new topic, the part played by impulse in human (and animal) life, which Russell mixed in with Freud, in my view unfortunately.
George Bernard Shaw is represented by five letters to Russell, most relating to the 'Great War'. Shaw loathed it as an evil, a social problem, a monstrous triviality, a vulgar frivolity. He clearly, judging from these letters, had no idea of the forces behind it. Russell had an inkling, but was inclined to blame ordinary people, subjected to intensive propaganda, and, later, call-ups and conscription and two years' hard labour for trying to escape. The general lines of the War as it appeared in Britain show through Russell's pages, but he seems, as far as his autobiography reveals anything, to have been out of touch with belligerents. It's a sad story, but set him up as an out-of-touch useful idiot.
His new topic emerged as Principles of Social Reconstruction (1915):
The first sentence is: 'To all who are capable of new impressions and fresh thought, some modification of former beliefs and hopes has been brought by the war.' Last is: 'Out of their ghosts must come life, and it is we whom they must vivify.'
Russell states that his book on social reconstruction made him a great deal of money (with no figures either of money or copies sold). He was obviously right in regarding the 'Great War', and the 'Russian Revolution', as important; but he ignored serious attempts at analysis of the results—for example, who gained from it, and to what extent the gains were planned. Russell seemed to have been aware of the Bryce Report as a propaganda fake—he wrote a bit about it in his wartime articles. He must have been aware of the 'Balfour Declaration', and was aware that secret agreements preceded the war. I can find no reference to John Reed in Russell's publications; and he dismissed Hilaire Belloc as being 'anti-Semitic'. Despite Russell's theoretical devotion to free enquiry, he failed completely in this critically important test case.
Russell's chapter on 'The First War' reveals him to have been ineffectual—writing articles, addressing audiences. Despite knowing Keynes, and despite his family connections, and familiarity with Prime Ministers, and visits to the USA, his chapter shows his helplessness. The dark side of British, or Anglo-Jewish, power, showed itself in jailings, for himself in the 'first division', and with hard labour and I think consequent death for E D Morel. And in compulsory call-up, when 'popular feeling about the war' proved insufficient. And of course in censorship. And in control over money 'for the duration'. And of course loans. The 1913 Federal Reserve and its other organisations set the stage. Anyone who takes Russell seriously must feel the tragedy of all this: he might have accomplished substantial work in deciphering events, as Europe's aristocrats fell and civilisation retrogressed; but he didn't.
Russell wrote articles throughout the Great War. One was Justice in Wartime, put into a book of essays; but most were I think not republished. He seems to have not taken them very seriously: a TV interview showed him talking about 'sheets' which nobody read. Russell was reluctant to have his writings republished if they showed him in a bad light: an entire 1930s book, Which Way to Peace, was never republished after 1945. I've now (June 2017) uploaded it; click here.
Here are three examples of Russell's ignorances on the 'Great War'. In each case Russell's error was to take the view of war which had been fed to most Britons (but not Jews), and which they hadn't had the brains or energy to analyse:–
- Like many others, for example Hilaire Belloc, he did not trace the roots to the Jewish hatred of Europeans. Jews wanted war.
- Russell thought the war proved that modern techniques were very productive; great productivity was proved by the fact the war went on for years, but people still were fed and clothed. He had no idea about loans in exchange for land, factories, assets: he'd only heard accounts of wars run on a cash-only basis, and had no idea that assets had changed hands (partly of course because the matter of ownership is very hidden and secret). The impoverishment was hidden.
- Russell had no idea of durations of wars: he assumed generals and civil 'servants' and politicians wanted short, efficient, wars. Deliberate prolongation was not on his 'radar'.
Russell often wrote for Jewish publications. It's curious to read (in an essay) that he was aware of the Coudenhove-Kalergi scheme for a mixed race Europe—he was inclined to think it may be a good idea, since of course he blamed Europeans for the slaughter of the 'Great War'.
Chapters II and III deal with Russell's visits to Russia after the Jewish coup, and then China. In the first case, he was an observer. He praised his hosts, but in such a vast territory, and with no Russian, it's difficult to see how he could expect to report reliably in such a land. He might have said he simply didn't know. But intellectuals dislike steps of that sort. Almost incredibly, he met Lenin and Trotsky and other 'revolutionaries'. In just one of his letters he talks of tyrannical Jews.
Russell was very gullible about Jews in the USSR. He writes for example of fish abounding in the Moskva river, but says only fish from trawlers were allowed, since they were industrial. Obviously people fishing would be called 'profiteers' and killed. Only the Jewish 'state' was allowed property—as in the famine in Ukraine. He records shots audible in (I think) Peter and Paul fortress, and thinks 'idealists' were being shot, rather than anyone educated, or rich and non-Jewish, or pro-Russian. He seems to have known nothing of anti-Russian Orthodox killings, and the expansion of Yiddish 'education'. He records how, after WW1 had officially finished, he was in Lulworth Cove, enjoying the scenery, and trying to decide between two lovers, indifferent to any serious concerns.
Russell then visited, and loved, China. ('Once a week the mail would arrive from England, and the letters and newspapers that came from there seemed to breathe upon us a hot blast of insanity like the fiery heat that comes from a furnace door suddenly opened.') He wrote somewhere that China's adopting Communism was inconceivable; in Russia he'd compared Communism with the ideals of Plato's Republic—showing he had no idea how Communism had been forced onto peoples. For that matter, he was surprised by the change in fortunes away from Germany near the end of the Great War—possibly the result of a secret agreement added to Balfour's Declaration giving Russia to Jews. He lectured in China, and his new companion, Dora, lectured on things like women's issues. (Russell realised he 'no longer loved Alys', on a bike ride). Russell's letters are moving and heartfelt, though understandably his grasp of the history of these vast regions was sketchy, mostly nourished by British Victorian history, in which Constantinople, the East India Co, ruination of the Peking Summer Palace, opium, Hong Kong, the Indian Mutiny, and so on were treated in the way distorted modern history is fed to gullible undergraduates now.
Addendum Oct 2017: Russell's visit to China appears to have been about a year—October 1920 to October 1921—and of that time about a quarter was spent in severe illness and recovery). The Chinese Lecture Association invited him, for a year; the previous year had been John Dewey. An online article by Tony Simpson says next year was to be Bergson—perhaps they thought official western philosophers were Confucius-like. And that Russell in his farewell address in July 1921 spoke of China passing through a stage analogous to that of the dictatorship of the communist party in Russia for the purposes of education and non-capitalistic industrialisation. ('Industrialism' ends to be a Jewish word; factories making weapons, slag heaps and ruin, huge prisons, make money for Jews, but not others). It's not clear which parts are verbatim Russell; it is clear that the financing, which must have been Jewish, was of course secret. Russell never succeeded in separating 'capitalism' from 'finance': in practice, non-Jews relying on the fluctuating Federal Reserve Jewish lending policies were evil capitalists, while Jews printing money ad lib to suit themselves and finance wars were respectable financiers. No wonder Russell received a note after his departure from China very politely chiding him for giving no useful advice.
Russell seems to have had not the slightest insight into realities of money; it's possible it was far more secret even than now. Just a few examples: In Korea at that time a Christian was practically synonymous with a bomb-thrower. Really? Sounds like Jews to me. And I also had a seminar of the more advanced students. All of them were Bolsheviks except one, who was the nephew of the emperor. They used to slip off to Moscow [in 1920!] one by one. I'd take a large bet they were puppets of Jews, perhaps even the 'Kaifeng Jews', a taboo group of course. Russell says The National University of Peking was very remarkable, the Chancellor and Vice-Chancellor both passionately devoted to the modernising of China. This despite the 'funds which should have gone to pay salaries were always being appropriated by Tuchuns ['provincial military governors'] so that teaching was mainly a labour of love. Well, there are lots of teachers like that, aren't there?
A reprinted letter from Johnson Yuan (Yuan is not on the list of 7 Sinified Jewish names I've seen) could not I think be the original invitation; he wants knowledge of Anarchism, Syndicalism, Socialism etc to be acquired, his letter written after Russell arrived in Shanghai. Anyway, a point which puzzled me is explained: Russell's works so far had been mainly in geometry, mathematics, and philosophy, and of course plenty of those might have been invited to China. He wrote against the 'Great War', but said nothing very helpful. His works on Social Reconstruction must have been the target. Russell mentions the Rockefeller Foundation as intellectual enemies. Probably in fact Russell was invited and paid as a useful idiot, conveying nothing. He writes all but nothing of his lectures and speeches, while much of his part-chapter talks of beautiful scenery, witty Chinese, impressive banquets, hotels elegant and otherwise, vicious British officialdom, Dora Black's pregnancy.
Aged almost 50, Russell never acquired more knowledge of China; he did nothing for the millions of deaths claimed to have been under 'Communism'.
The second parts of Volume II deal with Russell's second marriage, and a school Russell tried to set up in Telegraph House, an obsolete building which he bought from his bankrupt brother. This was a great period for experimental schools, because the memories of 19th century paying schools (H G Wells wrote on this) were still alive. There was scope for a combination of business with idealistic education. Russell never seems to have thought of founding or jointly founding a new university. Taxation, and legal restrictions, are now so high that perhaps home-schooling will become the 21st-century equivalent. Musing over Russell at the time, writing newspaper columns and collections of essays, and a potboiler or two, in a school he couldn't manage, trying to write great books and short of money, suggests he was at the nadir of his fortunes. His history of the 19th century Freedom and Organization: 1814-1914, written in two parts Legitimacy vs Industrialism 1814 to 1848 ('Industrialism' is used by Jews to suggest progress) and Freedom vs Organization 1776 to 1914 (1934), shows his struggle to make sense of the world whilst omitting the Jewish issue. Russell's literary non-starts are not stressed in his autobiography, but it's clear from McMaster University Archives that he tried, and failed, to write on 'fascism'. He said in a TV interview (not in his autobiography) that he had a new idea for a book almost every day.
Russell was invited to the USA to take up an academic position. If there were retirement and pension implications, Russell doesn't state them, though he does of course discuss his adventures when opposition was stirred up in the 'chair of indecency' Catholic incidents. At the time, New York had been spared the huge immigration of Jewish 'refugees', whose fraudulent claims provided them with a model for subsequent nonwhite invasions. Russell spent his time until the end of the Second World War in the USA. It's clear from his letters that he had no clue about Hitler or the Second World War.
During Russell's time in the USA, arms were shipped to the USSR in huge quantities, largely secretly as not everybody liked Stalin. Bear this in mind when reading Volume II. Russell isn't very clear on the 'phoney war' before 1941, or on the way Jews fixed up war against France, Germany, and Italy—and in effect eastern Europe, by supplying Stalin—and took part in the 'civil war' in Spain. Maybe this Anglo-American action will eventually produce a European backlash and revenge.
The final part of this volume has Russell working on History of Western Philosophy, as Jewish influence over the world sank deeper. Russell had theories on the rise and fall of civilisations and worldview: 'Three cycles: Greek, Catholic, Protestant. In each case.. decay of .. dogma leads to anarchy and thence to dictatorship. I like the growth of Catholicism out of Greek decadence, and of Luther out of Machiavelli's outlook'. This may have been related to the feeling of insecurity of a world amid a huge war—though very few people could explain why a tiny country like Germany should be taken so seriously. Thus Gilbert Murray, in typical confusion, to Russell: '.. not quite clear what the two sides were: Communism or Socialism against Fascism.. Christianity against ungodliness. But now.. Britain and America .. against the various autocracies, which means Liberalism v Tyranny..' Russell was not very secure in these categories. He was comfortable with philosophers and their schools, largely because some sort of consensus had been decided upon. But, despite his efforts, he never found convincing historical impulses and motives, as his book Power shows. Nor of course did for example Toynbee, at more or less the same time.
History of Western Philosophy can now be seen to be marred by errors, all to do with misunderstandings of Jews. No doubt others will become clear, for example related to science. Anyway, by Volume II Russell was convinced that Rousseau and Romanticism had led to 'Fascism'—Russell never seemed to use the expression 'NSDAP'. The NSDAP's name being a socialist workers party, and Russell advocating 'socialism', must have been a problem for him. However, the Labour Party leadership in Britain had decreed that Hitler was not left wing, after all, but right wing. Russell was primed to announce Rousseau 'led to Auschwitz' though this phrase is not present in History of Western Philosophy.
The reprinted letters following Chapters 12 and 13 (1930-7, 1938-44) light, one must assume, Russell's states of mind and activities when he was in his 60s, and well-known in the world. One from Einstein (1931), after flattery, recommends 'an international journalistic enterprise (Cooperation) to which the best people all belong as contributors ... to educate the public in all countries in international understanding. ... Dr J. Révész, will visit England in the near future..' [Original in German.] Russell's reply as printed merely invited Einstein to visit; probably this was just a small subsection of Jewish propaganda for Jewish control, which of course worked: Jews won the Second World War. Russell commented in the Tom Mooney case—no doubt a media-promoted thing.
[And described by David Irving in a video The Manipulation of History as one of many cruel, murderous Jews.]
Here's another account:
Matyas Rákosi (born Rosenfeld), de-facto jewish ruler of Communist Hungary, was part of jewish Bela Kun’s doomed government in 1919 but fled to Russia after Soviet Hungary’s collapse. He then became the Cominterm leader and returned to Hungary as dictator propped up by Joseph Stalin when Hungary fell under communism after WWII.
No doubt, for those Hungarians who lived through the Communist Era, it was common knowledge that Jews like Rakosi dominated The Party, but to state so publicly was suicidal considering it was a capital offense.]
It's clear Russell had no idea about the machinations intended to lead to world war. A large chunk—in my view, far too large—of the later letters deals with the City College of New York issue, in which an offer of a professorship was withdrawn—this is reminiscent of manufactured outbreaks of scandals in US education, which of course still happen. A letter from the 'Student Council' is enclosed; I'm sure Russell never got to the bottom of what happened, though he thought (as he said on early TV) it was a 'Catholic thing'.
At the end of his Chapter 9, 'Russia', (BR never seems to have used the expression 'Soviet Union'), here are 7 letters from Harold Laski in Harvard in the USA, 5 of them more or less consecutive from Aug 1919 to Jan 2020. They seem an example of the manipulations of fellow-Jews to get their people into controlling positions.
Volume III 1944-1967After the success of the first volumes of Russell's autobiography, there were problems with this. (Note: volume 3 is still not downloadable, in 2018). It seems the American publisher declined to publish. (I don't know any contractual or other details, though clearly the appearance of homogeneous external appearance of the volumes is misleading). Anyway, it was published eventually, though there seem to be traces of carelessness—Fennimore Cooper, Ralph Milliband, and Pablo Cassals suggest sluggish proofreading. (A tape-recorded transcription elsewhere of Russell has 'Bishop Bluebroom' for Brougham—perhaps proofreaders preferred simpler stuff). The problems were with war crimes and atrocities, which of course the Jewish media censor. The final quarter-century of Russell's life included his activism against the 'West'—Russell knew nothing of ZOG, except, just possibly, at the very end of his life. Certainly this volume is very much unlike the author's preceding volumes. Russell records his reactions to public events: the Second World War, the Cold War, the BBC, nuclear weapons, the Korean War, Kennedy's murder, the Cuba Crisis, the Vietnam War. Chapter III - Trafalgar Square looks at protests against nuclear weapons. Chapter IV - The Foundation is on the Bertrand Russell Peace Foundation.
That at least is the formal version. Russell probably had no idea about Eisenhower (Jew from Sweden) starving Germans after the war. Or the fraud of what was later called 'the Holocaust', curious Greek expression as it is. Or the BBC frauds, of which the plump and oily Dimbleby, a Jew from London, started anti-German post-war propaganda in earnest. Or the fact, suppressed for decades, that mail bombs were sent to Labour Party leaders by Jews, over Israel. Russell had been to Germany: he accepted the figure of 135,000 Germans destroyed in the razing of Dresden, 'but also their houses and countless treasures'. 'By giving part of Germany to Russia and part to the West, the victorious Governments ensured the continuation of strife between East and West, particularly as Berlin was partitioned and there was no guarantee of access by the West to its part of Berlin except by air.' Note Russell's assumption that the Governments, all of course known now to be Jewish controlled, wanted to stop strife. He must have been laughed at, for his gullibility.
Important note on which issues were taken up by protestors: Jewish misdirection encouraged timewasting on a vast scale, on issues now known to be non-existent, including 'Communism' and 'Nazism' and 'Italian Fascism' as spontaneous movements, nuclear weapons, the JFK 'assassination', the fake Holocaust of Jews, the moon landings. 'Climate change' mostly post-dated Russell. Rather pointless disputes over religion concealed the rent-collecting and fact-suppressing aspects of established religions.
Russell made a public announcement that Stalin's USSR should be invaded. He later denied his words, but the important point is that Jews in Russia felt they had to pretend to 'explode their first bomb in August, 1949'. Perhaps readers who have not met the nuclear revisionist view before might reread the above few sentences. A typical example of Russell's activism was his campaign on the Cuba Crisis—clearly at this distance a fake rigged up by Jews, along with the marrano Castro. About a year later, Kennedy was murdered (or allegedly murdered); again there's a Jewish link. (The Who Killed Kennedy? team included Mark Lane, a Jew, and Victor Gollancz, a lifelong propagandist for Jews. It's unlikely they would ever investigate seriously, of course).
In the late 1940s and 1950s, Russell was lonely and rather isolated. He says himself that after the war, Cambridge ladies thought he and his wife were 'not respectable'—you'd imagine they might have had other things to think about. Rupert Crawshay-Williams is my source for the 'loneliness' of Russell. His friends from youth had largely died. Alan Wood (who wrote on the then-notorious money-wasting groundnuts scheme) and his wife became friends; but Wood died, after writing a biography of Russell.
Russell's lifelong ignorance of Jews is clearer in (for example) Ronald Clark's Life. In 1945, the Jew propagandist, publisher and liar Victor Gollancz, 'leader of the "Save Europe Now" campaign', wrote to Russell: '.. the meeting may be given the character of an "anti-Bolshevik crusade" in the bad sense. I am told that already, as a result of the things they have seen, a lot of soldiers in Berlin are saying "Goebbels was right"; we don't want that sort of development.'
Russell's public views appeared on BBC radio as the first Reith Lectures, in 1948, a series of six, Authority and the Individual. Probably suggested by Sir Arthur Keith, and by nuclear myths, part of his talk stated that war had been a leading cause of innovation—very probably the reverse of the truth. Russell took little effective interest in the 'United Nations', unfortunately. For example, one of its foundational bases was the idea that races were of no importance—naturally, Jewish input was important here. Russell therefore was weak on actual possible world government, which he considered essential, since he swallowed the myth of nuclear annihilation. Volume III has Russell meditating on the future: the population problem. And 'economic justice'. Russell, misreading the world, thought political democracy applies in industrialised countries, no doubt accepting the Jewish view; but economic justice is 'still a painfully-sought goal.' Fascinating to read this elderly man's lucubrations on likely events of the next few centuries, especially, now, from a revisionist viewpoint.
Russell was given a Nobel Prize (for Literature) in 1950—most of which went in alimony payments, he writes here. Nobel Prizes are of course something of a joke; probably it had been decided that Russell's support for WW2 was worth a bit of cash. Among other things, Russell in 1952 visited Greece, troubled by the US Army; 1953, Scotland; 1954, Paris; in 1955 made a speech in Glasgow for a Labour candidate (which Alistair Cooke, a BBC hack from Salford in northern England, wrote about). This period was enlivened by philosophical disputations; Russell disliked linguistic philosophy, with 'common usage' one of its slogans, and Russell has accounts of his disputes. He seems not to have realised that Oxford philosophers might feel out of their depths in a world of nuclear weapons and mass murder of Jews, in which in retrospect they must have been laughed at, by politicians in the know.
And in 1955, Russell tried to get 'eminent scientists' to make a statement calling for joint action; Neils Bohr, Russian Academicians, Otto Hahn, Lord Adrian and others refused, and there was no reply from China. Josef Rotblat agreed to act as Chairman; I believe he was a Jew from Hungary. Looking back, he must have been part of the scheme to pretend Jews had nuclear weapons. In 1957, Cyrus Eaton, a Jew in Canada, put up money for a meeting in Pugwash. It can be seen that Jews were circling, just in case. (Note that Herman Kahn invented or popularised the word 'megadeath': I wonder if this was a leftover from the Jewish victory in the second World War). Ralph Schoenman is reported to have met Russell in 1960, the story being he hitch-hiked there; but who knows?
Russell's Autobiography mentions his affection for Victor William Williams Saunders Purcell (1896–1965), 'a Government administrator in South East Asia' [probably Malaya] and Don at Cambridge. 'I did not even begin to know him till he was drawn into discussions with us about the Foundation's doings in relation to South East Asia. ... it was not until May, 1964, that we really came to know each other...' They only really knew each other for about 9 months before Purcell's death. It struck me that perhaps he was part of the control being applied to Russell.
The Foundation: Russell's first speech to members of the Vietnam War crimes Tribunal was November 13th, 1966. This met some ridicule from the Jewish media; I doubt if anyone yet has researched into archives of (for example) the New York Times. Russell was uncomprehending about the Jewish media: newspapers exist to facilitate truth, and improve the world; surely that's an obvious ethical ground rule? Russell uncomprehendingly faced the Jewish liars of the world, to whom bombs meant money and young Vietnamese girls raped were good for a Jewish laugh. I think his letters to the New York Times were the first occasion in which he was faced with people genuinely and unblushingly favouring evil: destruction of Vietnamese landscape, bombing villages, large-scale rape, chemical warfare etc. The sort of thing that caused Robert Faurisson to say the USAF killed more children than any other organisation. Russell had no idea that so-called 'Jews' were evil, wanted to be evil, and liked being evil. His verdict on the destruction of Vietnam was pitifully innocent, and utterly non-aware of Jews: The Press, the military authorities, and many of the American and British legal luminaries, consider that their honour and humanity will be better served by allowing their officers to burn women and children to death than by adopting the standards applied in the Nuremberg Trials. This comes of accepting Hitler's legacy. It's now known by many that, of course, it was Jewish legacy, and here's my extra note–
[1] Nuclear Weapons.
[2] Persecuted minorities.
[3] Persecuted individuals and liberation of prisoners.
[4] 1963 Foundation formed, probably by 'Hungarian Jew' Ralph Schoenman. With Christopher Farley and Pamela Wood. Offices, secretaries, fact-finders, representatives, correspondents etc.
[5] 1963 JFK
[6] 1965 Russell's speeches against Harold Wilson and Britain's "Labour Party".
[7] 1966 Vietnam War: International War Crimes Tribunal
[1] Nuclear Weapons. Russell believed the entire propaganda message on nuclear weapons, and considered himself qualified to discuss them. He must have unwittingly become part of the propaganda process. Rotblat, Cyrus Eaton, Herman Kahn, Edward Teller, and many other Jews were part of the circus. How many members of the public were sceptical remains a secret, though probably Jewish public opinion samplings could provide some insight. Russell's chapter begins with his assertions about "self-preservation", and this (according to Russell) "trumped by the desire to get the better of the other fellow". Russell of course was naive about the entire Jewish technical faked superstructure. He believed in US search for raw materials and markets, for example cobalt which (Russell thought) could be used in a 'cobalt bomb'. Russell had no idea that Jewish profits from weapons, takeover of central banks, plus imposition of rents, could be far more lucrative: He was a perfect model of the type who sucks up to the rich, without determining where the riches come from, as described by Hilaire Belloc. Russell gives a puzzled account, in his section on financial begging: ... we [met] only once with virulent discourtesy. This was at a party of rich Jews given in order that I might speak of our work for the Jews in Soviet countries in whom they professed themselves mightily interested. Unfortunately, Russell doesn't say what the rich Jews said. And he doesn't say why Jews predominated in the Foundation; were there really so few honest whites in the world?
Cold War—Russell believed in the Cold War (and Cuba as a 'Communist' country) just as advertised in the Jewish media. Today, it's far more obvious that Jews controlled both the USA and USSR.
[2] Persecuted minorities. Russell mentions the Naga—still a live issue; they are being flooded by Bengalis. He also mentions 'Gypsies'. But on the whole there are few of these; certainly not whites, for example. Of course the Jew media approach only considers Jews, and Russell, with an almost comic ignorance, was concerned with Jews in the Soviet Union! ...
[3] Persecuted individuals and liberation of prisoners. ... Russell often championed individuals, generally with the most extraordinary indifference to what they had done. One gets the feeling that if Stalin had been found in prison, Russell would have responded to a letter pleading for the release of this long-term activist, with, admittedly, an uneven history. He lists a Jew from Germany, wanting to get an English girl pregnant; a Pole, or perhaps Jew, writing obscene verse; Greeks described as 'Communists, I'd guess Jew collaborators; Palestinians, described by Russell as 'refugees'; Jews in the USSR—'I began to make appeals on behalf of whole groups'; Sobell, the fake nuclear spy—but, if his story were true—might have imperilled the entire human race; Heintz [sic] Brandt. Even the notorious killer Jew, Rákosi.
[4] 1963 Foundation formed, probably by 'Hungarian Jew' Ralph Schoenman. Secretaries, fact-finders, representatives, correspondents etc. Bertrand Russell Peace Foundation (company limited by guarantee), and Atlantic Peace Commission (the latter a charity).
[5] 1963 JFK Russell lists (in about 9 pages) '16 QUESTIONS ON THE ASSASSINATION'. He was of course ignorant of the pattern of Jewish assassinations and violence through the ages. He was of course also ignorant of media-driven false flags and campaigns of lies.
[6] 1965 Russell's speeches against Harold Wilson and Britain's "Labour Party"
[7] 1966 Vietnam War: International War Crimes Tribunal. Russell talks in the final five pages or so, before the letters section, of his book War Crimes in Vietnam, which is not reprinted (2018) by his supposed trusts. Russell says it sold out, and was widely translated, but gives no sales figures. Here are the relevant pages from his autobiography:
Note how Russell, under the influence of post-1945 Jewish propaganda, always blames Germans and Japanese: '... [pretexts] reminded me of nothing less than those offered ... for Hitler's adventures in Europe ...' and '... American conduct in Vietnam as barbarism 'reminiscent of warfare as practised by the Germans in eastern Europe and the Japanese in South-East Asia'.
Russell's letters and appendices say more about the Vietnam War. The biography of 1975 by Ronald W Clark gives more information, including Russell's 'Private Memorandum concerning Ralph Schoenman'; the final portion states that Schoenman stated that all Russell's major initiatives since 1960 were Schoenman's work, 'in thought and deed', which Russell describes as 'preposterous' and perhaps 'well established in megalomania'. However, it may be truer than Russell thought: the 'Committee of 100' started in 1960, and it now appears that nuclear weapons were a hoax, and e.g. Cuba was controlled all the time. It's easy to imagine Schoenman selecting misinformation to feed to Russell, in (for example) Has Man a Future? published in 1961, and Unarmed Victory, published in 1963, on the 'Cuba Crisis' and Sino-Indian dispute. According to Clark, Schoenman's behavior (which included a lot of unexplained absences) became erratic and insulting as the War Crimes Tribunal took shape.
But note that Russell never, ever, separated the idea of a state or nation from the internal Jewish influence. No doubt the Vietnam War was a takeover by Jews; to this day as far as can be determined Jews control the money, and also control war crimes information—the opposite policy to their Holohoax fraud. He really thought some countries were 'Communist', for example.
Jews gathered round and controlled poor Russell's Foundation. Vladimir Dedijer was probably a Jew activist claiming to be a Serb; Isaac Deutscher wrote a junk biography of Stalin; Noam Chomsky issued statements mainly about Jews, and his later record on e.g. 9/11 and Kennedy proves his rôle was to obstruct and evade. Victor Gollancz corresponded with Russell (says Ronald Clark—himself of course a gullible paid-by-advances writer, who even wrote on Einstein); Barry Feinberg was an editor; Anton Felton was an accountant for Russell; Cyrus Eaton in Canada kept an eye on nuclear discussions; the New York Times censored him; so did the BBC. A large proportion of the writers in the Foundation's London Bulletin were Jews.
Looking back, it's clear a large part of Jewish activity was propagandist, and aimed to conceal Jewish wars and mass killings.
Jewish wars are not between nations or states, as is advertised, but to make money for Jews by control of weapons and equipment by finance, and making money from loans, usually to governments or 'governments', and controlling issue of money, with the bonus of maiming killing goyim and destroying creative achievements such as splendid cities. None of this is present in Russell. (It's just possible, though very unlikely, that John Russell ('Lord John Russell'), could have lived long enough to tell young Bertrand a thing or two). His speech to his tribunal was three or four years after his epistolary exchange with the Jew York Times. His book War Crimes in Vietnam remains discreetly unpublished by Routledge, his posthumous publishers, presumably picked by his Foundation. All this activity by Russell causes me to doubt Russell ever considered himself a Jew, something which has been suggested. I see why they say it; and why judging from published books it's credible. But I don't think it's true; he was just a Briton being polite and Christian to a few racially outlandish oddities. But he did follow the convention of secrecy about Jews: if there were any in his family tree, as is likely enough, he said nothing of them in his autobiography.
The main office or centre of the B.R.P.F. was established in Nottingham. Certainly atrocity accounts from Vietnam were known in Nottingham University. There were student actions in 1968, which have subsequently been presented by the Jewish media as hippiesque 1960s self-indulgence, and many people considering themselves politically aware have no comprehension of the underlying issues. Most of the activists were Jews, and most non-Jews at the time had no idea of this; and Jewish motives were mainly to hide the truth of creatures like Kissinger, and to hold on to money Jews made from war. The BRPF was a Jewish front from the start; just the list of their writers makes this plain enough. Probably revisionist re-examinations of the 1960s will correct the media mirage which has been assembled. But the picture largely remains intact: Richard Dawkins' autobiography, for example, shows complete ignorance of that time.
Looking again at Russell's conclusions drawn from his long life, we find: Consider the vast areas of the world where the young have little or no education and where adults have not the capacity to realise elementary conditions of comfort. These inequalities rouse envy and are potential causes of great disorder. Whether the world will be able by peaceful means to raise the conditions of the poorer nations is, to my mind, very doubtful, and is likely to prove the most difficult governmental problem of coming centuries. Russell used the expression 'third world' in his Autobiography, perhaps borrowed from Schoenman, I'd guess. But he left the problems to others: he believed 'the techniques are all known' for general prosperity; but he expressed no views on the genetic ability of populations, or the availability of raw materials and energy to move them around.
His final paragraph is about the 'The essential unity of American military, economic and cold war policies was increasingly revealed by the sordidness and cruelty of the Vietnam war. ... Most difficult for many in the West to admit.' Russell faced opposition, but never fathomed the truth about Jews and their collaborators.
After his Autobiography, Russell continued his activities as best he could. Dear Bertrand Russell was extracted from his archived letters, but edited by two Jews. His last published statement was on Israel's expansionism. His The Entire American People Are On Trial was published posthumously in March 1970. Russell's Autobiography is a landmark on the road to reversing several centuries of evil. It is well worth reading in entirety. He was not completely honest; and he missed some important truths, to such an extent that he might legitimately be regarded as worthless. But he has one thing which Jews and their allies can never have: they will never be able to present their lives, as truthfully as they can, to genuinely interested audiences, in the way Russell does.
RUSSELL, BERTRAND, ed. Feinberg, Barry: THE COLLECTED STORIES OF BERTRAND RUSSELL [1972]
Not just stories, but some other writings. Collected by the Jew Feinberg, who seems to have made some sort of living out of Russell, and presumably had met him.
The book is by now probably online, for example in archive.org, but I recently noticed I made notes on it many years ago. These notes include transcriptions of FAMILY, FRIENDS AND OTHERS (made from tape; about 1959) and READING HISTORY AS IT NEVER IS WRITTEN also from tape.
The transcriptions from tape contain a few errors; square brackets enclose my corrections, where I found them.
Russell is at his absolutely characteristic; he assumes non-aristocratic great men, and popular movements, come from nowhere, and has no idea about the activities of groups of people. It is saddening to perceive his lack of insight. But anyway here he is.
FAMILY, FRIENDS AND OTHERS
My paternal grandmother, who was a daughter of Lord Minto, had many interesting and some amusing reminiscences which it was rather difficult to elicit . she had to be coaxed to tell them. Her mother's father was a certain Mr Brydon who wrote a book called Travels in Sicily and Malta in which he advanced the terribly rash opinion that the lava on the slopes of Etna was so deep that it must have begun to flow before 4004 B.C. On account of this heresy, I regret to say, he was cut by the county. Nevertheless, one of his daughters married my grandmother's father, and her sisters came to live at Minto. On one occasion, after a good deal of coaxing, my grandmother told me that one of her aunts was rather vulgar. I said, 'In what did the vulgarity consist?' 'Well, she always had two eggs for breakfast, and she would look round the breakfast table and say "Who's eaten my second egg?" ' They were always boiled eggs and her vulgarity consisted in having two. Such was the effect of this story upon me that never throughout a long life have I been able to eat two boiled eggs for breakfast, though I can quite easily eat two poached eggs or two scrambled eggs or two eggs in any other way. But this story made it impossible for me to eat two boiled eggs for fear my descendants should say that I was somewhat vulgar.
I asked her whether she knew Sir Walter Scott. Abbottsford was in the immediate neighbourhood of Minto where my grandmother passed her girlhood. She told me that she only met him once, and that the reason she met him so seldom was that there was a feud between the Elliots, my grandmother's family, and the Scotts, who were the great family of Roxsboroughshire. This feud was taken on by Sir Walter Scott, and it was thought he had no right to take it on because he was not really at all closely related to the Scotts of Roxsborough; but he did take it on, with the result that she only met him once.
She told me once about an incident when her grandfather had been appointed Governor-General of India, and his wife was looking out for a chef who would be suitable for such an exalted situation. She interviewed one chef, who demanded two hundred a year. 'Why,' she said, 'that's as much as many curates get.' 'Ah, yes,' said the prospective chef, 'but you forget the mental work in my profession.'
She used to tell macabre stories sometimes, almost always somewhat derogatory of conjugal affection. Her worst of these stories was the story of an old couple who had lived in the closest harmony for many years, to the admiration of all their neighbours; and at last the wife died and was
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Anecdotes
put into the coffin. And as she was being carried downstairs, the coffin bumped against the corner and she revived. And they lived again happily for many years. At last she died again, was put into the coffin again, and as it was being carried down, the bereaved widower remarked: 'Take care not to bump against the corner.' This was the sort of story that she liked. I do not know quite why.
There was another story that she used to tell about a Scots girl called Maisie, who had very beautiful golden hair and in addition had a golden leg; and when she was buried, some very very wicked man rifled the grave and took away the golden leg. The next night as he was sleeping Maisie appeared before him and he said, 'Maisie, Maisie, whar is yer beautiful blue e'en?' and she replied, 'Mouldering in the grave.' And he said, 'Maisie, Maisie, whar is yer beautiful goulden hair?' and she said, 'Mouldering in the grave.' And at last he said, 'And Maisie, Maisie, whar's yer beautiful goulden leg?' 'Here, you thief!' At this point he gave up and restored the leg to its proper grave.
There was a story about my grandfather which illustrated, perhaps, a certain lack of such a tact as one might have expected. He was at a dinner-party, and after dinner when the gentlemen returned from the dining-table, he sat beside the Duchess of A. But after sitting beside her for some time he got up rather suddenly and walked across the room to the Duchess of B and sat beside her. When he and his wife got home, his wife said to him, 'Why did you so suddenly leave the Duchess of A?' and he said, 'Oh, because the fire was too hot and I could not bear it.' She said, 'I hope you explained to the Duchess of A.' 'Well, no,' he said, 'but I explained to the Duchess of B.'
At a time when my grandfather was Prime Minister, a terrible misadventure once befell him at the Lord Mayor's banquet. The Lord Mayor had received a very magnificent silver snuff-box, which was a gift from Napoleon III, and as he was showing it to my grandfather he said, 'You see it has a hen on it.' My grandfather, who wasn't looking at it very closely, said, 'Oh, I should have thought it would have been an eagle.' And on looking again, he saw that it was not a hen but an N. The rest of the dinner had to go on after this misadventure.
When I was six years old my grandmother took me to stay at St Fillans in Perthshire, and one day we went on a very long drive to Glenartney. I got rather bored with sitting still for such a long time and I was being amused by little rhymes; one of which was 'When you get to Glenartney, you'll hear a horse in a cart neigh', and when we got to Glenartney, sure enough, we did hear a horse in a cart neigh. I have often wondered since whether the Lord Macartney was a son of the Glen. But as to this I have never been able to ascertain the correct genealogy.
My paternal grandmother was a very patriotic Scots woman; and she told me that when she was a girl it was the practice at Christmas-time for
Family, Friends and Others
the village people to come up to Minto, where she lived, and perform little plays and songs, rather in the style of Bottom in Midsummer Night's Dream. These all had a patriotic tone about them. There was one in which a boy came forward and professed to be Alexander the Great, and said 'I am Alexander, King of Macedon / Who conquered all the world but Scotland alone. / But when I came to Scotland my blood it waxed cold / To find so small a nation so powerful and so bold.'
My grandfather established a village school in Petersham, which was his parish, at a time when such schools were still uncommon. My grandmother went to ask the children questions that were intended to test their intelligence, and one of the questions she asked them was 'Did you ever see a Scotchman?' And one of them cried, 'Yes, Milady, once at a Fair.' Then she went on to say 'Was he white or black?' 'Oh, black, Milady.'
When I was two years old my grandparents rented Tennyson's house, Aldworth, for the summer months, and I stayed with them. They used to take me out onto Blackdown and they taught me to recite, 'O the dreary dreary moorland; / O the barren barren shore, / O my Amy's shallow hearted, / O my Amy's mine no more.' / I am told, and I can well believe it, that the effect was irrestibly comic.
We often hear the phrase, 'old world courtesy', and I think that probably a good many people doubt whether there ever was such a thing. I think I can give two illustrations, both of which happened to my grandfather. My grandfather's nephew, Lord Odo Russell, afterwards Lord Ampthill, had had an interview with Napoleon III, shortly after Napoleon's rise to power. My grandfather asked him what he had thought of Napoleon III and he said: 'I thought that he was thinking, as I was, that he was the nephew of his uncle.' It seems to me that this was one of the most flatteringly polite remarks that I have ever come across. There was another example of the same thing, which was when the Shah of Persia was caught in a rainstorm in Richmond Park and took refuge in my grandfather's house. My grandfather apologised for the smallness of his house: 'Yes,' said the Shah, 'it is a small house but it contains a great man.' I think these examples show that old world courtesy really did exist.
When my parents visited America in 1867, my mother noted a few occurrences in her diary. There are three of these that seem somewhat interesting. One was when they went to see a well which Berkeley had visited, while he was on his abortive journey to the West Indies; and my mother played with the bucket of this well in a manner that was thought irreverent by Berkeley's admirers who had taken her to this place. The second occasion was, I found, still remembered when I went to America nearly thirty years later. There was a very fine dinner-party arranged for my parents and they provided terrapin which was considered a very great delicacy. My father, who was somewhat conservative in his eating habits, 267
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refused, whereupon my mother shouted along the length of the table, 'Taste it, Amberley, it's not so very nasty!'
This was still remembered with horror when I was there in 1896. The third incident which is recorded in her diary is another dinner-party in Cambridge, Massachusetts. She says, 'I sat between Mr So and So and Mr Longfellow, the poet. I liked Mr So and So.' Of Mr Longfellow she says nothing whatever.
Some occasions, when I was a child, filled me with somewhat bitter disappointment. On one occasion after we had been talking about cannibalism I heard my people say to each other: 'When is that Eton boy coming?' and I thought they meant a boy who had been eaten. When he turned up, and was a perfectly ordinary boy, it caused me the most profound disenchantment. But that was not the worst. The worst instance was when I heard them say to each other, 'When is that young Lyon coming?' And I said, 'Is there a lion coming?' 'Oh yes,' they said, 'and you'll see him in the drawing-room and it'll be quite safe.' And then they came and said, 'The young Lyon has come,' and they ushered me into the drawing-room and it was a completely conventional young man whose name was Lyon. I burst into tears and wept the whole of the rest of the day, and the poor young man couldn't imagine why.
My first contact with Robert Browning was when I was two years old. He came to lunch with my people and brought with him the actor Salvini. Everybody was used to Browning, but Salvini was more of a rarity, and they would have liked to hear him speak. But Browning talked the whole time without stopping. At last, unwittingly, expressing the feelings of the company, I said, 'I wish that man would stop talking.' I had, of course, to be hushed very quickly, but he did stop.
I was kept to very spartan fare in the matter of eating when I was a boy. It was thought that fruit was absolutely disastrous for a child and he must never be allowed any. One time after we had all had pudding, the plates were changed and everybody except me was given an orange. I was given a plate but I was not given an orange. I remarked plaintively, 'A plate and nothing on it.' Everybody laughed-but I didn't get an orange.
My cousin, G. W. E. Russell, who was something of a gourmand, was dining once with my people and expressed a very strong preference for one dish rather than another. I also had the same preference but I was compelled to have the dish that I didn't like and was told: 'You must not have your little likes and dislikes.' And I said, 'Cousin George has his little likes and dislikes.' Again I was quickly hushed, but I never was able to see the justice of it.
I had an uncle, Rollo Russell, who was very good at explaining things to children. I asked him one day why they have stained glass in churches, and he said 'Well, I'll tell you . long ago they didn't, but one day, just as the parson had got up into the pulpit and was about to begin his sermon,
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he saw a man outside the church walking with a pail of whitewash on his head. And at that precise moment the bottom of the pail fell out and the man was inundated with whitewash. The poor parson could not control his laughter and was unable to go on with his sermon. So ever since they've had stained glass in windows.'
My cousin, St George Lane Fox, afterwards Fox Pitt, was a very singular character. While a very young man he invented electric light before Swann and Edison had thought of doing so. He then got religion, not in the form which is usual in the West, but in the form of esoteric Buddhism. This caused him to think that he should occupy himself no longer with mundane affairs, and he went to Tibet to visit Lamas and to learn all the niceties of Buddhist theology. However, after a certain length of time in Tibet he decided to come home again, and he then discovered to his disgust that Swann and Edison had been making electric light. He brought actions against them, a number of actions, all of which he lost, and in the end he was reduced to bankruptcy. But he consoled himself with the tenets of esoteric Buddhism and thought that after all a man should be able to do without a plethora of worldly goods. He then had an experience which shows the dangers of book-learning. He married a sister of Lord Alfred Douglas. On his wedding night he was overheard saying: 'I must go and look it up in the book,' and shortly afterwards he was heard saying, 'It sounds quite simple.' However, very shortly afterwards there was a nullity.
My great-aunt, Lady Charlotte Portal, had various claims to distinction. Her latest was that she was the grandmother of the only man who holds both the Garter and the Order of Merit. Her earliest claim to fame occurred when she was a very small child. She tumbled out of bed, failed to wake up, but was heard muttering: 'My head is laid low, my pride has had a fall.' She was sometimes a little inapt in ways of expressing herself. On one occasion when she was starting for the Continent, her. footman, whose Christian name was George, came to take her luggage to the train, and just as the train was starting it occurred to her that she might wish to write to him about some matter of business, and that she didn't remember his surname; so she put her head out of the window and said: 'George, George, what's your name?' George touched his hat and replied: 'George, Milady.' By that time the train was out of earshot and the thing was irremediable.
My sister-in-law, Elizabeth, was once staying in a Swiss hotel where the partitions were somewhat inadequate. The room next to hers was occupied by a middle-aged American couple. She heard them coming up to bed and conversing animatedly for a time, then, there was a long silence, interrupted at last in a severe feminine voice, 'Henry, is it because you won't, or because you can't?'
Another sister-in-law, when she became engaged to my brother, was brought to lunch with my grandmother, who practised the strictest Victorian propriety. The girl was shy and behaved with a pretty restraint until near 269
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the end of lunch when, unfortunately, there came a thunderstorm. The thunder got louder and louder and at last there was an absolutely deafening clap. She leapt from her seat, exclaiming 'Golly!' My grandmother had never heard the word, but very justly concluded that if it had been a suitable word for young ladies, she would have heard it.
My [maternal] grandmother, Lady Stanley of Alderley, was a person of quite exceptional vigour, and a good many of her descendants inherited this exceptional degree of vitality. She used to give Sunday luncheons to her children and grandchildren, and at these there used to be argumentation such as I have never heard before or since, for vehemence and profound conviction of entirely opposite sorts. One of her sons was a Mohammedan, one was a Roman Catholic priest, one was a free thinker, one was an Anglican, and one of her daughters was a free thinker and another was a Positivist. All these different creeds used to meet, and each would uphold his own point of view with the utmost vigour. The Mohammedan was nearly stone-deaf and when the disputes reached a certain degree of noisiness he would become aware that something was going on. He would then ask what it was, and his immediate neighbours would pour completely garbled versions of the argument into his ear, whereupon all the rest would shout, 'No, no, Henry, it's not that.' And at that point the din became such that it was almost incredible that everybody was not deaf. He, Henry, the oldest of my grandmother's sons, was a very odd character. Not only had he become a Mohammedan, which was odd enough, but he had married a certain completely unknown and obscure Spanish lady, not once, but three or four times without being in fact legally married to her at the end, although he, poor fellow, did not know this. He was a very curious person altogether; he caused Lord Salisbury to say that many things had been said against their Lordship's house, but until now it had not been possible to say that they were not gentlemen, and I regret to say that he had made this possible.
He had, of course, as might be expected, ultraconservative opinions. I knew a lady named Miss Coolidge, who was a great granddaughter of Jefferson and very proud of the fact. She met him at the house of one of my aunts, where there was at the same time a doctor who had just happened to have called in. My uncle turned to Miss Coolidge and said, 'Do you believe in old-age pensions?' And she said, 'Yes I do.' And he said, 'Shows you know nothing about it.' He then turned to the doctor and said, 'Do you believe in old-age pensions?' And the doctor said, 'Yes.' 'Shows you want one yourself.' At this point my aunt thought she would smooth matters over and said, 'You see, Miss Coolidge is an American and perhaps she does not quite understand our conditions.' At which he said, 'American, are you? I suppose you know Washington was a murderer?' And she said that no, she did not know that. And he said, 'Yes, he was, and I shall never forgive those people until they return to their allegiance.' 'Well, you see,'
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she said, 'you can't expect me to think that, because my great grandfather wrote the Declaration of Independence.' To which he said, 'How many people's great grandfathers wrote the Declaration of Independence, I should like to know !' She then got up to go. He bowed handsomely and said, 'Don't you think I get on very well with your countrywomen?' However, she remembered the story and many years after told it to me precisely as I have now related it.
My uncle Henry had a younger brother called Lyulph. My brother, meeting with uncle Henry in the Lords on one occasion, very rashly went up to him and said, 'Have you heard that Lyulph's cook has gone mad ?' My deaf uncle who always insisted upon hearing said, 'What, what, what?' So my brother said more loudly, 'Have you heard that Lyulph's cook has gone mad?' To which my uncle still said, 'What, what, what?' My brother then shouted as loud as he could, HAVE YOU HEARD THAT LYULPH'S COOK HAS GONE MAD?' But this time all their Lordships were looking round to see what the noise was. My uncle said, 'Lyulph's gone mad? Well, I'm not surprised.' At that point my brother gave up.
My grandmother, Lady Stanley of Alderley, had the great advantage of being completely incapable of doubting her own merits. She used to say, 'You know I've left my brain to the Royal College of Surgeons, because it'll be so interesting for them to have a clever woman's brain to cut up.' She also said that she knew only one thing in which her ancestors had been foolish and that was that they were Jacobites. They had, in fact, had to fly from Ireland after the Battle of the Boyne, and they only returned when the French Revolution made France dangerous for them.
She used to sit in a very large drawing-room and entertain at tea all the leading literary men of the age, and when any of them went out she would turn to the others with a sigh and say: 'Fools are so fatiguin'.' This caused all the rest to determine that they would not be the first to leave the gathering, for fear the same should be said about them. She had rather high standards. She put me through a viva one time, in the presence of a large number of visitors: 'Had I read this and had I read the other,' and I hadn't read any of the books. At last she turned to the others and said, 'I have no intelligent grandchildren.' According to all modern educators this should have damped me down. It did not, however: it made me determined that I would prove that she was mistaken.
My grandmother had two sorts of descendants: those who inherited the Stanley toughness, and those who did not. I, to my misfortune, was one of the latter. The others, who inherited the Stanley toughness, didn't mind at all the way she talked to them. I remember my cousin, Christopher Howard, being taken to task by her for always answering her in a way she didn't like. She said, 'Don't say, "Yus, Granmama".' And he wasn't in the least abashed, whereas I would have sunk through the earth at having such a thing said to me. She used, sometimes, when she was in a good
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humour, to tell stories to her credit. She told, for example, how when she was a very young girl in a convent school, the other girls induced her to throw snails over the wall into the neighbour's garden. And this, of course, was a very wicked act. But she said, 'But, you see, I can't tell it to show how badly we turned out, because I've turned out so well.'
There was, however, one occasion, the only one I know of, in which things turned out as she might not have wished. She was staying at Naworth Castle where her daughter [Lady Carlisle] reigned. Lord Carlisle was a Pre-Raphaelite painter and a friend of all the other Pre-Raphaelite painters. Burne-Jones happened to be staying with them and had a tobacco-pouch which was made to look like a tortoise. One evening, when they were at dinner, this tobacco-pouch was brought in, for fun, and put close to the drawing-room fire. Now there was a real tortoise in Naworth at this time, and when they came in from dinner Lord Carlisle discovered this supposed tortoise close by the fire, picked it up and said, 'What an extraordinary thing, its back has grown soft.' He then went to the library and fetched the relevant volume of the Encyclopaedia, looked up 'tortoise' and read out in a very portentous voice: 'On certain very rare occasions under the influence of very great heat the back of the tortoise has been known to become soft.' My grandmother was intensely interested in this very curious zoological fact, until then quite unknown to her. And she went about telling everybody about it. Years later when she was quarrelling with her daughter about Home Rule her daughter said to her, 'Well, Ma, you know you were taken in about that tortoise. It was really Burne-Jones's tobacco-pouch.' And she said, 'My dear, I may be many things, but I am not a fool, and I refuse to believe you.'
My uncle, George Howard, Lord Carlisle, was a friend of Cross, the husband of George Eliot. Cross was known in literary circles as the author of a book called, A Commentary on Dante, with an Appendix on Bimetallism. On one occasion, my uncle ventured an opinion on bimetallism, and Cross said, 'What do you know about bimetallism?' To which my uncle replied, 'Well I've read Dante.' His next contact with Mr Cross was of a more painful sort. Cross and George Eliot were on their honeymoon in Venice. My uncle was staying in the same hotel. Suddenly he saw Cross plunge from the balcony into the Grand Canal. Naturally my uncle went to rescue him, which was not difficult. It appeared that Cross had read in George Eliot's journal that she only married him out of pique because Lewis was not faithful to her, and this had driven the poor man to suicide. However, suicide in the Grand Canal in front of a large hotel was not so dangerous as it might have been, and he lived for many years after.
My uncle, Lord Carlisle, was willing to tell stories against himself, and he told me that he had once related to a newly-rich American the story of the cast of the Venus de Milo which had been ordered by another newly-rich American. When it arrived, so the story averred, he sued the railway
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company for having broken the arms, and won his case. 'Yes,' said my uncle's American friend, 'but there's just one difficulty about that story, it's older than the Venus de Milo.'
Gilbert Murray was not only an eminent classicist, but also a very amusing raconteur. He had a great fund of stories, some of which I much enjoyed. I remember particularly one about Mr Gladstone. At a very large meeting, the Conservatives had planted a drunken man in the front row with a view to interrupting Mr Gladstone. Mr Gladstone endured the interruptions for some time with patience, and then at last he turned upon the drunken man, and in his most majestic voice he said, 'May I request that gentleman who has not once, but repeatedly, interrupted the flow of my observations, to extend to me that large measure of courtesy, which, were I in his place and he in mine, I should most unhesitatingly extend to him.' The drunken man was overwhelmed and uttered not another word.
My cousin, Lady Mary Murray, the wife of Gilbert Murray, was a woman for whom I had a very great respect, but she had one shortcoming: she was destitute of a sense of humour, and occasionally this had curious results. I went to see her and Gilbert Murray one day and he said to me, 'I have just found a school for my boy.' So I said, 'Oh, where is it?' 'Well,' said he, 'it is kept by the Reverend V. Ermine, of the Creepers, Crawley Down.' Mary interrupted and said, 'Oh, Gilbert, he is not Reverend.' The only truth in the whole story was that the school was at Crawley.
I remember another occasion when I rang the front door bell and asked the maid if they were at home, and she said, 'Well, Sir, I think they're probably in unless they're out.' So I found that they were in, and I said, 'Your maid is of the opinion that one should employ great caution in applying the laws of thought to empirical material.' And Mary said, 'Oh, what an unkind thing to say.'
Mrs Bernard Shaw was a very remarkable lady. Some of her merits are set forth in Man and Superman, but there were some I was privileged to observe. One time when I was lunching with Mr and Mrs Shaw, there was a young Austrian lady present, and she apparently, was a poetess. As the rest of us were saying good-bye, Shaw remarked, with something of a simper, that this young lady was not going yet as she was going to read him her poems. Nevertheless, when we got outside the door, there was the young lady; I have never known how Mrs Shaw got her out. But a very few days afterwards this same young lady went to visit Wells and said, 'If you do not make love to me I shall cut my throat.' He refused, and she cut her throat, but apparently she had had a good deal of practice and was not much the worse. This gave me a considerable respect for Mrs Shaw.
Sir Sidney Waterlow, whom I had known since he was an undergraduate, achieved a position of some distinction in the Foreign Office. He was, in fact, in charge of Foreign Office relations with the Far East. I had some dealing with him in this connection, because during MacDonald's first
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Government it was decided that Britain should devote the money obtained by her under the Boxer Indemnity to some project that would be of advantage to China, and a committee was appointed to see how this should be done. Among those put on the committee were Lowes Dickinson and myself. There were also to be two representatives of China, who were to be appointed by the Chinese Government. However, before the committee was fully functioning, MacDonald's Government fell, and the succeeding Conservative Government decided that Lowes Dickinson and I should not be on the committee, nominally on the ground that we did not know much about China, but really because we were friends of the Chinese. I had recommended to the Chinese, Hu Shih and V. K. Ting, as people whom the Chinese Government might think suitable. The Chinese Government agreed, and suggested them. The Conservative Government sent word to the Chinese that they would accept any two Chinese except these two. The Chinese Government replied that they must have these two or no one. This confirmed Waterlow in his opinion that I knew nothing about China.
However, it was not only with regard to China that I had dealings with him. He had married an extraordinarily beautiful young woman, a daughter of Sir Frederick Pollock. I met them by accident on their honeymoon, and I observed that something was amiss, though it was six years before I knew what. At the end of six years Waterlow told me the whole story. Under the influence of G. E. Moore he had become convinced that there was something base about sexual intercourse. He had, therefore, never consummated his marriage. At the end of three years of marriage, however, he changed his mind, and thought that perhaps Moore was mistaken, and he therefore tried to consummate the marriage. But three years of total abstinence had rendered him, in regard to his wife, impotent, and he was unable to consummate the marriage. They went on for another three years with gradually increasing quarrels, and at last decided that the marriage must be annulled. He, at this point, was sitting alone in a restaurant in London feeling rather melancholy. A prostitute sat down at the same table and said, 'You seem melancholy, duckie, what's the matter?' So he told her all about it. And she said, 'Oh I'll soon cure that, you come home with me.' He did and she did. It so happened that, though a prostitute, she was married. Her husband divorced her for improper relations with Waterlow, at the very same moment at which his marriage with his wife was annulled on the ground of his impotence. He, though he didn't much like having his marriage dissolved, was so pleased to discover himself not impotent, that he went round to all his friends boasting about it. He subsequently married another lady and had by her an adequate family. It does not seem to me that he managed his matrimonial affairs very much better than he managed our relations with China.
When I was a younger man I was very much addicted to walking. On one occasion I was walking round the coast of Cornwall, and as the evening
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came on, I reached the Lizard. I went to the hotel and asked if they could put me up for the night. They said, 'Is your name Trevelyan?' I said, 'No, why do you ask?' They said, 'Oh, because we are expecting Mr Trevelyan tonight, and Mrs Trevelyan is already here.' I was much surprised, as I knew that it was George Trevelyan's wedding day, and I was very much astonished to think that Mrs Trevelyan should be there and he should not be. I thought something dreadful must have happened, and I went to see her to inquire. 'Oh, no,' she said, 'nothing dreadful happened, but when we reached Truro, George said "I must have a little walk," and he got out of the train to walk to the Lizard' [a distance of some forty miles]. Sure enough he arrived at eleven at night, completely worn out, and had to be revived by brandy. It was a very happy marriage.
There were some things in my childhood education which I suppose came about by accident, but which had a very considerable influence upon me. I had a book called Stories About, and when you looked inside it was mostly about clever dogs and horses and things of that sort, and, in fact, all the stories except two at the end were such as would still be considered entirely suitable for children. But it was not these stories that interested me. The one that interested me most was the very last, which was about a Negro woman in Jamaica who caught her child stealing sugar-cane and therefore fastened the child on an ant heap where it was eaten to death. This was the story that really interested me. And then I had a book of nursery rhymes set to music. It began quite conventionally with 'Sing a Song of Sixpence' and 'Hickory Dickory Dock'. But there again there was just one that particularly interested me. It began: 'There was a lady all skin and bone', and it went on to relate her doings.... 'Sure such a lady was never known; / She went to church one summer's day, / She went to church all for to pray, / and when she got the church within, / the parson prayed against pride and sin, / on looking up, on looking down, / she saw a dead man on the ground; / And from his nose unto his chin, / the worms crawled out, the worms crawled in; / Then she unto the parson said, / "Shall I be so when I am dead?" / "Oh, yes Sah, yes," the parson said, / "You will be so when you are dead." ' This somewhat diminished my confidence in the consolations of religion.
There are some well known stories that give me a lot of pleasure. One of them comes in Dickens, apropos a gentleman who was knighted by George III under a misapprehension, when it was another man he should have knighted. And Dickens remarks, 'On this occasion, His Majesty was graciously pleased to observe "Ooooh, ooooh what, whaaat, why, why, why?" '
Then there is the story about the somewhat irascible schoolmaster who turned to one of his boys, and said in a very cross tone, 'Who made the world ?' And the boy said, 'Please sir, it wasn't me.'
Then there is Lady Betty. Lady Betty was a very young girl, perhaps six
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or seven years old, and she had committed what her parents considered a sin and was told to ask God to forgive her. She was asked afterwards by her parents, 'Did you ask God to forgive you?' And she said, 'Oh yes, and He said, "Pray, don't mention it, Lady Betty!"'
And there was another child, I think of about the same age, who put an embarrassing question. She said, 'What time does God dine?' And they said, 'Ach, God doesn't dine.' And she said, 'Oh, I see, he has an egg with his tea.'
Ever since I was a boy, I have derived a great deal of pleasure from that piece of nonsense which says, 'So she went into the garden to cut a cabbage leaf to make an apple pie and just then a great she-bear coming up the street pops its head into the shop. "What! No soap?" So he died, and she very imprudently married the barber and there were present: the Piccaninies, the Joblillies and the Galeolies and the Grand Panjandum himself with a little round button atop and they all fell to playing the game of Catch As Catch Can till the gunpowder ran out of the heels of their boots.' I took so much pleasure in this that I learnt to say the whole of it in one breath.
There was once upon a time a family with a very rich maiden aunt, whose affections were entirely centred upon a cat whom the rest of the family detested. One of her nieces became engaged to a young man who, after hearing the general abuse of the poor quadruped, killed it, and presented it to the family, saying: 'I have brought in this cat as trophy.' The maiden aunt disinherited them all and with one voice they exclaimed: 'What a catastrophe !' The Oxford Dictionary appears not to know the etymology of this word.
When I was a boy of about twelve, I was taken to Midhurst, and derived very great delight from the ruins of Cowdray. I was standing on a little bridge over the River Rother. I did not known that it was the River Rother. An old countryman came along and I said, 'What is the name of this river?' And he said, 'She ain't got no name and she don't want none.' It was many years before I discovered the name of the river.
When I was a very shy youth of seventeen, I once went out to dine at a neighbouring house, where the two daughters were friends of mine, and their mother was only an acquaintance. Before dinner, their mother, whose name was Lady Burdett, said to me: 'I hope you won't mind not being given your proper precedence. You ought, of course, to take me into dinner, but I'm a dull old woman and I thought you would rather sit between my daughters.' I was completely stumped; I did not like to seem to insist on my proper precedence, nor could I admit that she was a dull old woman. I hummed and hawed and was reduced to silence. When I got home I asked my grandmother what I should have said. She provided the answer at once. 'You should have said, "Oh! Lady Burdett!" '
The first time that I ever heard of Winston Churchill was in 1890 when
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I was a freshman at Cambridge and he was still a schoolboy at Harrow. I was having my hair cut at Trufitt's and the man who was cutting my hair said, 'Lord Randolf's son's 'aving 'is 'air cut in the next room, Sir. 'e is a young pup 'e is.' And so I got interested in him and followed his subsequent career.
When I was first at Cambridge, one of the figures of Cambridge Society was F. W. H. Myers, a poet who was also much addicted to spiritualism, and was considered, though this may have been scandal, to be a man of not strictly virtuous life. He related how George Eliot, when he took her into the Fellows Garden at Trinity, remarked that 'There is no God and yet we must be good.' The man who related this story to me made the comment: 'and Myers concluded that "There is a God and yet we need not be good."'
A young fellow of Trinity having become engaged to be married, asked the Whiteheads for permission to bring his fiancee to lunch. She came, but was too shy to utter a word, until towards the end, Mrs Whitehead said, 'Will you have tart or pudding?' To which she replied, 'Poy'. She survived, however. Fifty years later, I was travelling from London to Cambridge and she happened to be in the same compartment. She lost her ticket, but when she presented herself at the barrier saying she had no ticket, the ticket collector replied, 'That's all right, Milady.'
When I was a young man there was a teacher of philosophy in Cambridge named Dawes Hicks. It happened that he lived next door to the Whiteheads. Whitehead dropped in to see him one evening and found him rather unhappy because he said his housekeeper had borrowed his car without asking permission, and so he was unable to go out as he had intended to do. So Whitehead said, 'Well, why don't you give her notice?' And Dawes Hicks said, 'Well, perhaps I will.' Whitehead went to see hun again a week later and said, 'Well, did you give your housekeeper notice?' 'Well, . . . no,' said Dawes Hicks. 'Well, what have you done?' 'Oh, well, I've married her.'
The two most perfect snobs that I have ever known were both Dons at King's College, Cambridge. One of them was Sir Charles Wallston, and the other was Oscar Browning, commonly known as O.B. I remember an occasion when the Empress Frederick came to Cambridge for the day. I met both of these men in the evening. Sir Charles Wallston said, 'It was really most annoying that in spite of all I could do to dissuade her, the Empress Frederick insisted on lunching with me a second time.' Oscar Browning, on the other hand, was most sad and discouraged and said, 'I have been Empress hunting all day.' I only once heard Oscar Browning admit to not personally knowing a celebrity, and that was when the King of Saxony came up in conversation and he said, 'I knew him very well . . . by sight.' He had, unfortunately, a very painful experience when Tennyson came to Cambridge, and King's College gave a party for him, at which all
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the Fellows appeared one by one and mentioned their names to him; and when O.B. came he said, 'I'm Browning.' Tennyson looked at him and said, 'You're not.' I do not quite know how he survived this incident.
When I was a young man, I once took Professor Stout, the editor of Mind, for a walk in the country. We came upon a lot of cows, some of which, at any rate, some of us thought might be bulls. His little son aged five, who has since become a professor of philosophy himself, remarked to his father, 'Now father is the time for your afraidness to come on.' And in view of that remark, the eminent philosopher did not dare to show any fear.
At one time when I was on a walking tour in County Kerry, I visited Henry Butcher, who was well known as one of the translators of the Odyssey. He told me a rather curious story about the Maglicurry [sic; McGillicuddy] who was the great chieftain of that region, and held the distinction of having a whole mountain range called after him. It appeared that the Maglicurry on one occasion was travelling on the Continent. He was at a bookstall thinking what he should buy, when a young American lady came up and mistook him for the bookstall attendant, and asked for a book. He was very haughty and refused to answer at all to what she said. However, on looking round he saw that she was very charming, so he observed which carriage she got into in the train and he got in too. He tried to get into conversation, but this time she was haughty. She was travelling with her parents, and he discovered that her Christian name was Mary. Her surname was still unknown to him. Presently the parents wanted the window closed, but it was very stiff and wouldn't close. So he got hold of the strap and pulled very hard, and the strap came off, and he was deposited full length on the floor of the carriage. After this it was impossible to keep up any kind of haughtiness and they began to converse. Presently the time came when the young lady and her parents were getting out of the carriage, having reached the end of their journey. As they got out, he turned to her and he said, 'Miss Mary, someday you shall be my wife.' She was rather surprised. He didn't know where she lived or what her name was. And he didn't say, 'Someday I hope . . .'; but 'Someday you shall be my wife.' However, he found out what hotel they were staying at, and ingratiated himself with them and explained that he was an Irish Chieftain of very ancient lineage and very grand altogether. And so at last the lady accepted him. He took her back to his home, which was not nearly as grand as she had expected and after some time he became a Mohammedan. They had one son, and the religious education of the son consisted solely of one precept. He said, 'My boy, remember this: God is a perfect gentleman.' That I believe was all the boy ever learnt of religion.
Logan Pearsall Smith in his mature years was a somewhat precious and very careful highbrow author. But in his younger days he had his off moments, some of which I remember; and as I think they were never printed, it is perhaps worth recording them. I remember some of his verses
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in a play that he produced for family consumption. One of the verses said: 'Naughty little cuss words, / Such as 'blast' and 'blow', / Quite as much as wuss words, / Deep in the realms below; / Naughty little social fibs, / Such as "not at home" / Lead us to the outer realms, / Where the wicked roam.'
And then he made a little verse about love: / 'Ah love, love, love, / It cometh from above / And sitteth like a dove, / On some. / But some it never hits, / But only gives them fits / And takes away their wits. / Ah hum.'
In 1894 when I was for a few months honorary attache at the British Embassy in Paris, I was invited to a dinner-party by a very rich American lady. Among the guests, the most noted was the daughter of Jay Gould, then at the height of his fame. All the young men present, except me, made up to her, although she was not a lady, apart from her fortune, who would have seemed particularly attractive. At the end of the evening the hostess said to me, 'Are you engaged to be married ?' 'Yes,' I said, 'I am. Why, what made you ask?' 'Oh, I thought you must be because you were the only young man who did not run after Gould's daughter.'
When I was in Rome in 1894 I met a very pleasant middle-aged American lady whose hair was still all black except for one streak of pure white. She told me a story which gave me the very greatest delight. It was the story of an old countryman who observed that another traveller on the same train had a hamper to which he paid very great attention, and the old countryman longed to know what was in the hamper. And at last he asked, 'What have you got in the hamper?' And the man who had the hamper said, 'A mongoose.' And he said, 'Why have you got a mongoose?' 'Why,' the other said, 'don't you know that a mongoose will eat snakes. And I have a friend who, alas, has been somewhat unduly addicted to alcohol and who sees snakes, and I'm taking the mongoose to him to eat the snakes.' And the old countryman said, 'But don't you know those snakes are not real?' And he replied, 'No more is my mongoose.' This story from its metaphysical turn delighted me and I laughed so loud that the lady could not imagine why.
When I was a slightly younger man than I am now, I was much addicted to bathing, and somewhat curious things sometimes happened to me when I emerged from a river in a remote country place after bathing. On one of these occasions when I went to put on my clothes, I found the Prime Minister on the bank. This was in 1916 when he was just debating whether or not he should put me in prison, and I felt that it was a little difficult to preserve the dignity that I should have wished to show on such an occasion, when I had not a stitch of clothing on me. However, we had a very pleasant conversation, and I escaped on that occasion without being carted off to jail.
When I lived in China I found the Chinese sense of humour extraordinarily congenial to me, and, in fact, it gave me great delight. I will give one instance. One rather hot day, two Chinese businessmen, both of them
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rather corpulent, invited me to spend the day in the country motoring with them. We went to visit a very famous, very ancient pagoda, which was in a somewhat dilapidated condition. There was a staircase up to the top, and I went up, expecting them to follow me. But when I reached the top, I saw them below in earnest conversation. When I got down I asked them why they had not come up. 'Well, we debated, with many very serious arguments pro and con whether we should come up or whether we should not, but we decided that as the pagoda might at any moment crumble it would be as well that there should be some to bear witness how the philosopher died.' And, of course, the whole truth was simply that the weather was hot and they were fat.
I had heard many times the story of a young man named Bidder, the son, or perhaps the grandson, of a famous calculating boy. This young man was very averse to getting up early in the mornings, and during one Easter vacation, while he was still an undergraduate, he was staying in Naples, and they came to him and said, 'You must get up.' And he said, 'Why?' And they said, 'Because the hotel is about to be sold.' 'Oh,' said he, 'I'll buy it.' And went to sleep again. The result of this was that he became a hotelkeeper in Naples, and remained so for the rest of his days. I'd always heard this story without believing it. At last one day I met the man, and to my astonishment found that the story was true.
I have sometimes caused astonishment to my friends without intending to. When I was President of the Aristotelian Society, a great many years ago, I decided to shave off my moustache, which had been rather large and luxuriant, and at the next meeting of the Society I observed a curious kind of coldness and aloofness among the other philosophers. At last I sat down in the President's chair, and they all gave a gasp, and I realised that until that moment they hadn't recognised me and hadn't imagined who this person was who had come in. That was the first time that I created astonishment. Another time was when I was engaged in writing Nightmares of Eminent Persons, and I had notes on my table which were observed by a visitor, and the notes were headed 'Notes for Nightmares', and he said 'Do you really, before going to bed, make notes of the nightmare you expect to have?'
When I was a young man I became very much interested in Bishop Creighton, who seemed to me rather similar to Bishop Bluebroom [sic; Blougram!] in Browning. The first time I met him, he and his wife were arriving to dinner with Professor Marshall, the economist. She was saying in rather a loud voice, 'I don't care what I eat, I leave that to the men.' To which he replied, 'What do you leave to the men, my dear?' This remark pleased me and I remembered him. I learnt later from his wife's life of him that he sometimes gave offence to very earnest clergymen. There was one who was extremely High Church, and, I regret to say, used incense not merely for fumigatory purposes, which is permissible, but for purposes which are forbidden by law. The Bishop had to go and expostulate with him, and expos
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tulated in perhaps a somewhat frivolous manner. At last the clergyman said, 'You seem to forget, Milord, that I have a cure of souls.' To which the Bishop replied, 'Oh, I see, you think souls are like herrings, before they can be cured they must be smoked.'
I have always been of the opinion that it is possible to live a virtuous life without the support of revealed religion, but I have found that some of the men who agreed with me in this opinion were not altogether to my liking. There was Dr Stanton Coit, who was the head of what is called the Ethical Movement, which exists to prove that virtue can be independent of dogma. Some of the evidence, however, was a little curious. He once invited me to a dinner-party, arrived after all his guests had assembled, threw himself into an armchair, produced a bottle of smelling salts and, between sniffs, remarked in a moribund voice: 'Oh! I've had such a day, such a day!' When slightly revived, he informed one of his lady guests that she needn't think he was a marrying man. He later married a rich widow. On one occasion, at a meeting of the Aristotelian Society, a paper was read about Kant. In the discussion, Dr Stanton Coit said: 'Kant was good to his mother and this fact will be remembered when his system is forgotten.' When it came to my turn to speak I said: 'I cannot share the cynical opinion of Dr Stanton Coit that kindness to one's mother is rarer than Kant's philosophical ability.' I fear, however, that his cynicism was as great after, as before. He was, as it were, the bishop, if one may use such a term, of the Ethical Movement, which retained from orthodox religion the habit of meeting at eleven o'clock on a Sunday in a quasi-religious building. I went once to see what happened on these occasions. They had a large number of choir boys in surplices who came in and intoned a creed designed to show how very different their tenets were from those of the orthodox. The boys all said: 'We do not believe in God, but we believe in the great spirit of humanity.' And when I'd been almost bowled over by this sentiment, they went on to say: 'We do not believe in survival after death but in immortality through good deeds.' On the whole I felt less inclined to believe in their tenets after this occasion than I had before, and I found it extremely difficult to preserve my faith against the buffets of experience.
On the last occasion on which I visited that extraordinarily beautiful building, Tewkesbury Abbey, I was considerably surprised to find a memorial tablet to a lady named Victoria Woodhull Martin. I was surprised because I had known of this lady and her equally or almost equally famous sister, for a very long time, and not in ways that would lead one to expect commemoration in a religious edifice. Victoria Woodhull Martin was a very extreme feminist at a time when feminism was not yet common; and she was extreme, not only politically, but also ethically, in her feminist claims. She stood for President of the United States at a time when such a thing was unheard of, as, indeed, it still would be. A local newspaper in a city where she was speaking announced her coming with the words: 'Victoria
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Woodhull Martin is a lady of quick conception and easy delivery and her husband is a man of great parts and deep penetration.' Her sister, Tennessee Katherine, married a neighbour of ours in Richmond where I lived as a boy. He was Sir Francis Cook when he was in England, but in Portugal he was a Marquis. He had a considerable picture gallery and was an authority on art. When he first married her, she sent round a work that she had written on reformed and feminist morality to all the important people at Richmond, and with one accord they decided that they would not call on her. When her husband died, his grandson, who loved her desperately, wished to marry her, and was only dissuaded when they showed him the table of affinities in the prayer-book. I do not know exactly what happened to her after this tragic severance.
At the beginning of the Second World War, Julian Huxley, then Secretary of the London Zoo, was summoned by Mr Winston Churchill, as he then was, to explain the provisions regarding wild beasts that had been made in case of air raids. He told how whenever an air raid was in progress, keepers with loaded revolvers would stand ready to shoot any animal whose escape would be dangerous. 'Seems a pity,' said Mr Churchill, 'bombs exploding, houses tottering, flames spreading, lions and tigers roaring. Seems a pity.'
My friend Crompton Llewelyn Davis, who was a partner in the eminent law firm of Coward, Chance and Co., was addicted to extreme shabbiness in his clothes, to such a degree that some of his friends expostulated. This had an unexpected result. When West Australia attempted by litigation to secede from the Commonwealth of Australia, his firm was employed, and it was decided that the case should be heard in the King's Robing Room. Crompton was overheard ringing up the King's Chamberlain and saying: 'The unsatisfactory state of my trousers has lately been brought to my notice. I understand that the case is to be heard in the King's Robing Room, perhaps the King has left an old pair of trousers there that might be useful to me.'
Everyone knows the first recorded words of Thomas Babbington, afterwards Lord Macaulay, and everyone remembers that these words were: 'Thank you, Madam, the agony is abated.' But it is a mistake to suppose that these are the first words that that man ever uttered. A great.aunt of mine in her very early youth knew his nurse in her extreme old age, and she used to say, 'Lor, Milady, they was not his first words, you wouldn't believe the things he used to say.' She would then repeat some of them, not in her natural idiom, but with all the elegance of diction and pronunciation to be expected in the words of so eminent a man. 'Why, Milady, I remember as if it were yesterday the little lad come running up to me, fresh from the garden, three years old he was, and he says to me, "Nurse," he says, "in the ideal constitution there should be a just balance of forces, while on the one hand the will of the people should be adequately represented in a popular house, on the other hand the wisdom of those who through their
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stake in the country have acquired a certain stability of political judgement, should not remain unheard." "Lor, Master Thomas," said I, "'ow you do go on." ' Many hundreds of such pearls of wisdom she would repeat to my great-aunt, but alas, between my great.aunt and me, all the rest are buried in oblivion.
There has been a similar drying up of the well of truth in regard to Thomas Carlyle. He, as everyone knows, is supposed to have observed the gospel of silence until the age of three, when he remarked in a meditative tone of voice, 'What ails wee Jock?' This also, however, is a myth. His mother told his wife and his wife told my mother of many earlier sayings showing the first budding of philosophical rhetoric. Several months before the above known occurrence, he made another remark about wee Jock: 'Mither,' he said, 'the lamp of history sheds its glimmering light down the long corridor of the past, and to those who have eyes to discern its flickering flame, reveals that it was not I but wee Jock that broke the vase on the mantelpiece.' 'Ach, Tommy, don't fret so,' said his mother.
When Thales and Jeremiah were both living in the town of Tempe in Egypt, they happened one evening to meet in the pub. Owing to the Babylonian war, the beer was not what it had been. But, faute de mieux, each ordered a tankard. After a first sip, Thales said: 'All is water.' Jeremiah replied: 'Woe, woe!' Nevertheless, they left the pub arm in arm.
Once when I was staying at Clovelly, I walked, on a fine day, to Hartland Point. There I met a coastguardsman with whom I got into conversation. I asked him how far it was from Hartland Point to Clovelly, and he said, 'eight miles'. And I asked him how far to Lundy Island, and he said 'ten miles'. 'And how far from Lundy Island to Clovelly?' I then asked. 'Twenty-two miles,' he replied. 'But that is impossible, for according to what you say, even if one came round by Hartland Point it would only be eighteen miles.' 'Well, Sir,' he replied, 'all's I can say is, Sir, that Captain Jones was here a few days ago, and I says to Captain Jones, says I, "How far do you make it from Lundy Island to Clovelly?" And he says to me, says he, "I've known this coast, man and boy, thirty years and I make it twenty-two miles."' Against Captain Jones, man and boy, Euclid's arguments flung themselves in vain.
Disraeli, in spite of his political eminence, was somewhat painfully conscious of the fact that his hands lacked beauty. Nevertheless, in an absent.minded mood he allowed them on one occasion to rest upon the dinner-table. There came one of those unusual moments of complete silence. Lady Margaret Cecil, who was sitting next to him, remarked, 'Awful pause'. With extreme haste he withdrew his hands and concealed them beneath the table.
I know of another example of the danger of homonyms. Mr Attlee is only known to have made one joke in the course of a long and honourable career. At a Pilgrim dinner he spoke of a certain village in rural England
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where there was a very fine old church falling into disrepair, where no money was forthcoming to keep it from ruin. At length, by good fortune, an immensely rich American discovered that his family came from that village, and he therefore supplied the funds needed for the restoration of sacred edifice. When the restoration was complete, a thanksgiving service held in the renovated church at which, as was natural, the eminent American was present. The vicar in an eloquent prayer expressed his gratitude to Providence, saying: 'O Lord, we thank Thee that in our hour of need Thou hast sent us this succour.' The American thought the sentiment might have been better expressed.
Once, in an American train, I got into conversation with a young naval officer, and happened to mention Brussels. 'Brussels,' he said, 'I like Brussels. There's more sex appeal per square foot there than anywhere else except Suez and Constantinople.' Nevertheless, I have never visited either.
The people one meets in trains tend to be somewhat odd. One time when I was travelling, there was in the train an old farmer, a very simple old farmer. And I found on talking to him that he was an anarchist. He did not know the word anarchist, he did not know he was anarchist, but he had been impressed with the fact that Public Bodies waste water. It happened that the train was running alongside a main road and there was a steam-roller and a great quantity of water being spread upon the ground. 'There, you see,' he said, and on the ground that Public Bodies waste water he wanted all public bodies abolished.
I have sometimes found that people with whom on the whole I am in agreement, express their opinions in ways that I cannot entirely subscribe to. I remember once meeting a fiercely feminist lady who, after talking at great length about the superiority of her sex, wound up by saying: 'The half of every man is a lunatic.' 'Yes,' I said, 'the better half.'
And I remember another lady, also a very very convinced feminist, who was impressed by the fact that women, who at times were not able to sit in Parliament in England or in Congress in America, were able to sit in the State legislature of a State which she called 'Collarada'. And she said the effect of their presence in the State legislature had been an immense improvement in morals and manners. She assured me that since women have sat in legislative halls in 'Collarada' there has been no more of that throwing of spittoons and ink-pots. They soon showed the men that they were not to be flirted with, no, nor flirted at. At this point she turned to her neighbour, who was a Roman Catholic, and said: 'Nothing is more certain than that women will be ministers of religion, ay, and priests too.' He said, 'Oh, I hope some things are more certain.' 'No,' she said, 'nothing is more certain.'
Advantages sometimes happen through the misguided practice of getting on to a train after it is in motion. I was once travelling from Paddington to Evesham. There was one other passenger in the carriage, a youngish lady.
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We sat at opposite corners in prim silence. But at Oxford, after the train was well under way, a man dashed into the carriage. A porter seized him by the legs to keep him out, and I seized him by the arms to get him in. I shouted at the porter: 'Let go or the man'll be killed!' He did, and we got the man in. This broke the ice and there ensued a rather curious conversation with the lady. She turned out to be a school-teacher who was being obliged to leave England and go to Canada, because her headmistress disapproved of teaching arithmetic by modern methods. So I naturally said to her, 'What are modern methods?' 'Ah, well,' she said, 'the old method was, you told the children two and two are four; and they learnt this. But the modern method is to say: "Now dear children, how many eyes have you?" and they say: "Two"; "And now dear children how many ears have you?" and they say: "Two"; "And now dear children, how many legs have you?" and they say: "Two"; "And now dear children, how many noses have you?" and they say: "Two". But my headmistress does not approve of this method of teaching arithmetic and I shall have to go to Canada. There's only one drawback, which is that I'll have to become a Roman Catholic.' And I said, 'Don't you mind that?' 'Oh, no,' she said, 'I've nothing against them except that they play cards on Sundays after Mass.' With this contribution to theology the conversation ended.
One of the most beautiful women that I have ever seen, was one with whom I had only five minutes conversation and whom I never saw again. However, the conversation was as fruitful as five minutes could make it. She told me that she had recently returned from Mexico, and that while in Mexico City she, having taken a taxi, was pursued by twelve Mexican Generals, each in a taxi, and each determined to rape her. 'But,' said she, 'I was on very good terms with the President, and I managed to reach him before they had accomplished their fell work.' I regret to say that by this time the five minutes were up.
I once met a lady teacher from Texas who, if one may believe her own account, had had a somewhat curious and adventurous life. She said that the youth of Texas were extremely violent people, some of them: she had boys of fifteen or sixteen in her class and had some difficulty in keeping order. 'How did you manage it?' I said. 'Oh,' she said, 'of course I always had a loaded revolver on my desk.' Which didn't seem to her at all an odd thing for a teacher to have. She'd had all sorts of adventures. She wrote an autobiography which opened with her being raped by her brother when she was four years old. Unfortunately she got this autobiography printed in Paris, and had the proofs sent to her in England. The British Government considered the autobiography improper and Scotland Yard waited upon her, and the autobiography never saw the light of day.
I once met in the train a gentleman who was even more anti-clerical than I am. It was a train which was about to arrive at Exeter, and he said, 'I hate Exeter, there are so many parsons there.' At that moment the train
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reached the platform and he said, 'Look, there's one now!' in just the tone of voice that he might have employed if it had been a black beetle on his kitchen floor.
There have been two occasions in my life when I have thought that I was on the track of a good story but found to my great regret that I was not. The first of these was when I was walking one day with Sir Spencer Walpole, the historian. I had been reading Kinglake's History of the Crimea, and I said to him, 'Why does Kinglake hate Napoleon III so bitterly?' And Sir Spencer Walpole replied, 'They quarrelled about a woman.' I naturally said, 'Will you tell me the story?' And he said, 'No, Sir, I shall not tell you the story.' And shortly afterwards he died. The other occasion was when a friend of mine, at a public dinner, found himself sitting next to Sydney Colvin, and Sydney Colvin began complaining about Rossetti and said he used to write the most scurrilous verses; 'He wrote a scurrilous verse about me, it began: "There is an art critic named Colvin, whose writings the mind might revolve in . . ." 'My friend said to him, 'Will you tell me how it went on?' 'No, Sir, I shall not tell you how it went on.' And history does not relate what the remaining lines were.
Dante Gabriel Rossetti, like a good many other famous men, had to have his off-times when he was not exhibiting those virtues for which the public loved him. When he had got tired of 'The Blessed Damosel' he would write verses of a somewhat different sort. I can remember two examples of these. One commemorates a notable event in the town of Aberystwyth. It goes as follows: 'There was a young girl of Aberystwyth, / Who took sacks to the mill to fetch grist with, / But the miller's son Jack / Laid her flat on her back / And united the things that they pissed with.' There was another poem which I believe has never been printed, of which I can remember only one verse. It commemorated the joys of paradise, before the fall, and this verse which I remember said: 'Who in Eden's garden had 'em / without so much as Sir or Madam, / Who rogered Eve, who buggered Adam ? / My Maker.' I think that if these verses had ever been published they might, perhaps, have diminished his popularity with the admirers of the Blessed Damosel.
The grounds of people's political opinions are many and diverse: some seem fairly ordinary, some are more strange and bizarre. I think the most remarkable reason for voting that I ever came across was that of the Professor of Arabic in Cambridge when I was young. He very much disliked Mr Gladstone's excursions into scripture knowledge, and on one occasion when he had voted Liberal my friend Whitehead asked him why he had voted Liberal. 'Oh,' he said, 'because when Mr Gladstone is in office he hasn't time to write about holy scripture.' I think this is the strangest reason for voting that I have ever come across.
The Reverend Dr Abbot was a clergyman who wrote a book called Flatland, which greatly delighted me when I was a boy. He was a man
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in whom philosophy somewhat overpowered the clerical qualities which one would have expected of him. He found himself once on a bus, where there was a drunken man who was pouring forth foul-mouthed obscenities such as no clergyman could be expected to endure. He felt it his professional duty to reprove the man, and the man said, 'There must be some of all sorts and I'm of that sort.' Dr Abbot, remembering his Plato, was completely silenced.
Everybody remembers how Napoleon on his way to Egypt sat on the deck of the ship surrounded by members of the Institute: various scientific luminaries who, during the Revolution, had been vehement atheists. Napoleon, however, was determined to regard himself as the earthly reproduction of the Heavenly Emperor, and, therefore, thought that there must be a Heavenly Emperor. He set to work to convert the scientists. He pointed to the stars and said, 'Who made the Stars?' The members of the Institute, realising on which side their bread was buttered, were then and there converted.
Now I was once sitting beside the driver of an old horse-bus on a starry night and the bus driver said to me, 'A week ago, Sir, there was a hathiest a.sitting where you is now.' So I said, 'Oh'. He said, 'Yes there was, Sir. And I said to him, " 'o made them stars?" and 'e didn't know what to say.' So I thought, well, I don't know whether he has the other qualities of Napoleon, but he certainly has one of them.
There was an extremely genteel lady once who was travelling in a train, and it so happened that sitting opposite to her there was a man who had a crucifix on his watch-chain, but in spite of this talked in a very blasphemous and horrible fashion. The lady said to him, 'I am surprised, my man, in view of the emblem that you bear, to hear you speaking in this manner.' And he said, 'Lor, Maam, that ain't Christ, that's the other bloke that died by him.'
Maupassant, on a visit to England, decided to visit literary men living. in London. The first on his list was George Meredith. Maupassant, as everybody remembers, suffered from ailments which are generally considered the result of a not too virtuous life. So did Meredith. Maupassant remarked, 'Well, after all, we have to pay for our pleasures.' 'Not at all,' said Meredith. 'Not at all. It has nothing to do with that.' He had another adventure on the same visit. This time it was Henry James. In those days fashionable ladies used to drive round the park in open carriages if the weather was fine, and Henry James, who understood that Maupassant took a certain interest in the ladies, determined to try to impress him. And all the most famous beauties of the age drove by in open carriages, and Henry James would say to Maupassant, 'That's a beautiful woman'; and Maupassant said 'Non'. And he tried it again and again. Maupassant said 'Non'. At last, so Henry James related, he said, 'I persisted in my little opinion.' And Maupassant said, 'Non. J'ai couche avec une foute d'Anglaises et
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Americaines. Habillées elles sout bien. Deshabillées, Non.' Henry James pursued the subject no further.
I have often heard people spoken of as 'the typical Englishman' but I have found a logical difficulty in this conception. One may say that an Englishman is typical in this or that respect, if he possesses most of the properties that most Englishmen possess. Now, as a matter of fact, most Englishmen do not possess most properties that most Englishmen possess. Therefore, the typical Englishman is untypical. I have never been able to get round this puzzle, and I have therefore concluded that no Englishman is typical.
Sir Donald MacKenzie Wallace, the author of a monumental work on Russia, told me a story which illustrates the tribulations of an author. He said that shortly after the publication of this work, he happened to meet Robert Louis Stephenson, then a very young man, at a party. They got into an argument about Russia, in which Stephenson maintained certain views which Wallace, somewhat modestly, controverted. At last Stephenson, who had not heard the name of the man to whom he was speaking, explained, 'I know I'm right because I've just been reading Wallace's Russia.' 'And I have just been writing it,' replied Wallace.
Mrs Sheldon Amos, whom I knew some number of years ago, was a highminded lady whose main activity was rescue work. As she expressed it to her friends: 'Since my dear husband's death, I have devoted my life to prostitution.' Her son-in-law, a gallant officer in Her Majesty's Regular Army, had fought in many parts of the world, had been repeatedly shipwrecked, and had been the only White man in the midst of native mutinies. After listening to his story, I ventured to say, 'You've had a rather adventurous life.' 'Oh, no,' he said, 'I don't think so. Of course I've never missed my morning tea.'
Professor J. A. Smith, the eminent Oxford moralist and metaphysician, visited me at my college rooms in Cambridge in 1912. It happened that the Professor of Arabic was present at the same time, but Professor Smith failed to apprehend this fact. By sheer accident the Reader in Ornithology in the University of Cambridge and the Reader in Oriental Art were also present. Professor Smith who, though a metaphysician, prided himself on his outdoor life, ventured a remark about a bird that he had seen, and was corrected by the Reader in Ornithology. He then spoke of a famous objet d'art which he said had been removed from Peking by the Germans after the Boxer Rebellion. The Reader in Oriental Art remarked that he had seen it in Peking a few months ago. Nothing daunted, Professor Smith began to speak of his travels in Egypt. His saddle-man, he said, had made a certain Arabic speech, which he repeated to us and which he then translated for our benefit. The Professor of Arabic, who until this moment had sat silent and apparently asleep, looked up and asked, 'What did you say he said?' Professor Smith repeated the supposedly Arabic words. 'And what did you
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say it meant?' said the Professor of Arabic. Professor Smith repeated the English equivalent. 'Well that is very odd,' said the Professor of Arabic, whose identity had remained a secret until that moment. 'The correct Arabic for what you say is etc.' Professor Smith took the next train to Oxford and never returned to Cambridge.
In spite of my duties as host, I viewed his discomfiture with equanimity, because once while I was reading a paper to the Jowett Society at Oxford, he had sought to triumph over me by methods which I could not wholly approve. Professor Smith, in common with our Hegelians, held that truths are only truths because the Absolute thinks so. I remarked that according to this doctrine a man would instantly become bald if the Absolute forgot to notice his hair. Professor Smith, in replying to my paper, alluded to the text about the hairs on our head being numbered and said in a tone of portentous gravity that to his infinite regret I had seen fit to make fun of beliefs in which all of us had been brought up, and which for some of us were very precious. Apparently the beliefs in question included the belief that he knew Arabic.
It has sometimes happened to me to be accused of things which the general public does not seem to think me guilty of. in fact, it tends to think exactly the opposite. I was once in a large town in the State of Kansas, and thirty men invited me to dinner. It was during Prohibition and I was not offered a drink, but one of the thirty had arrived very drunk. He was seated a good distance away from me, but he crawled along the whole length of the table to say, 'What do you know about life? You ought to have more to do with women. You don't know anything about women. You're an ignorant fellow you are.' The others all tried to hush him, but it was quite impossible, and I was rather pleased to have this very unusual accusation hurled at me.
Again, quite recently, a journalist asked me what newspapers I read, and I said I read The Times and the Manchester Guardian. So he said, 'Oh, then you don't know anything about human nature, you can only find out about human nature by reading the popular Sunday Press.' And I was impressed by the fact that human nature to him consisted entirely of scandals, divorces and murders and he didn't seem to think that human beings ever did do anything else.
HISTORY AS IT NEVER IS WRITTEN
I am about to relate the history of the period that I am writing about. In this period, the ancient yeomanry gradually lost control of their landed property through a succession of bad harvests, which were taken advantage of by urban adventurers destitute of the ancient piety that had distinguished the yeomanry. Through this corruption, the State became far inferior to what it had been in the old days, and the tentacles of financial power extended from the capital over many rural areas. It is to be lamented that the decay of morals which was thus caused, was not for many centuries remedied, and, as was not to be wondered at, the State thus degraded morally, tended to fall a victim to other States more morally regenerate and less intellectually decadent. This, I say, is the history of the period I am writing about; if you ask me what period that is I will say it is Attica before Solon's legislation, it is Rome after the Punic Wars, it is England as depicted in Moore's [sic] Utopia, Goldsmith's Deserted Village and the Hammonds' Village Labourer, it is Southern California as depicted in Lawrence's [sic; Norris] Octopus. Last it is the state of Kenya as described in the future official history of East Africa, in the chapter called 'The Mau Mau Martyrs'.
I find that the things that interest me in history are not exactly those that the historians emphasise, and indeed I have found very frequently that the things that seem to me best worth emphasising are passed by in a footnote or a parenthesis. Now take for example the Dialogues between Buddhists and Greek philosophers which resulted from Alexander's conquests. In these Dialogues, since they were composed in India, the Buddhist is, of course, victorious, but I do not find that Western philosophers give as much weight as they should to the Buddhist's arguments. They always assume, as a matter of course, that the Greek philosopher must be the better, but I'm not at all sure that he really was. Or take another thing, take Justinian, and the School of Philosophy in Athens. The School of Philosophy in Athens persisted in glorifying Pagan philosophy long after the State had become Christian, and this pained Justinian and he decided to close the School of Philosophy. The worthy philosophers thereupon migrated to Persia, which, as they had been correctly informed, was not Christian, and therefore they thought must be open to Greek philosophy; but when they got to Persia they found two things that they considered quite intolerable. One was the practice of incest, encouraged in the Royal Family, and the other was the practice of polygamy. Both these things so
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shocked the philosophers that they came back to Athens and conformed, at least outwardly, to the Christian ethic.
I was very much pleased when I read about the first negotiations between the British and the Chinese, to find that the Chinese Government officially complained of the British that none of their suggested treaties contained any mention of filial piety. On this ground, the Chinese considered the English morally degraded, and until they managed to complete some moral reformation, the Chinese thought it would be unwise to have any treaty with them whatsoever.
Hegel was at one time the ruling philosopher in academic circles; he was so when I was young. I did not learn at that time what I discovered since: that Hegel thought the Absolute idea spread gradually from one country to another, but at the time of Charlemagne settled upon Germany, which it had never since abandoned. There were, however, three periods in German history according to Hegel; the first period was that of the Father, the second that of the Son, and the third that of the Holy Ghost. The period of the Holy Ghost, according to Hegel, began at the time of the Peasants' War, a most atrocious business in which the State, encouraged by Luther, brutally extirpated those who demanded agrarian reform. I was rather interested to find that this seemed to Hegel a suitable activity for the Holy Ghost.
Another thing that I found very interesting is the extraordinary difference between the thirteenth century as it was, and the thirteenth century as it appears in most books of Christian apologetics. The thirteenth century was a very vigorous and a very remarkable century, in many ways one of the most remarkable there has ever been, but it was not, if one may trust what its own people said at the time, altogether remarkable for a high standard of virtue. The friars and the monks hated each other with a passionate hatred, and the friars said things about the monks which are far worse than any the Protestants have ever said about them. For example, they describe the lady who went to confess to a friar, and when she had finished her confession, he found that she had a dagger in her bosom. And he said 'Why that?' 'Oh,' she said, 'because the last three times I went to confession it was to a monk, and each time the monk raped me, and I decided that if this happened again I would plunge the dagger into my heart.' The friar considers this typical monkish behaviour.
At one time I kept a school that was more or less on modern lines, and it was accused by the neighbours of every kind of shocking practice. I, of course, did what I could to deny these accusations, but at last I discovered that exactly similar accusations were made by the friars against the schools conducted by the monks. It appeared that in these schools, all the things that I was said to do, were said by the friars to be done by the monks. This rather consoled me.
Another thing that I discovered rather to my surprise about that same
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period of history, was that cathedrals were not built to the glory of God, as one is commonly told, but to the glory of the local bishop. It was always the local bishop who wanted the cathedral to be great and grand; and all the really pious people of the time were puritans, who objected to pomp and splendour and thought that a little tin tabernacle would do just as well, and opposed bitterly the creation of the cathedrals, which was the work of thoroughly worldly dignitaries of the church. This was a surprise to me and somewhat interesting.
Another thing that one is told is that the Church preserved learning throughout the Dark Ages. Now, Pope Gregory the Great, who was Pope in the year 600, was a very remarkable man, a very great statesman, but he, who lived just at the beginning of the Dark Ages, did not have this attitude towards elegant latinity which we are told the Church preserved: on the contrary, he wrote to a certain bishop, saying: 'A rumour has reached us which we cannot mention without a blush, that thou expoundest grammar to certain friends. The praises of the Lord and of Jupiter cannot exist in the same mouth, and should this rumour be not without foundation, we enjoin you to desist at once from this pernicious practice.' What the bishop did, I do not know, but I do remember this, that when I learnt Latin grammar there was a list of impersonal verbs . rains, snows, hails and so forth . and my grammar said that Jupiter is understood as the subject of these sentences. This rather enables me to understand the point of view of Gregory the Great: I believe modern grammars omit this remark.
I once knew a man who made a marriage of reason, but the result was not wholly satisfactory. He was a philosopher of some eminence, A. W. Benn. He wrote a very good history of Greek philosophy, lived in Florence, and was very much addicted to long walks throughout the neighbourhood. But he was extremely short.sighted, and could only see a little way with the help of very powerful spectacles. When he reached the age of fifty, he decided to marry. He decided that the lady of his choice must have three qualifications; first, she must not be under thirty, second, she must know Greek, and third, she must be able to walk at least twenty miles. The first of these qualifications was satisfied by many of the ladies in pensions in Florence, the second . that she should know Greek . was not nearly so common, but he discovered one, at last, who had this qualification. It remained to be seen whether she had the third. He invited her to take a walk in the neighbourhood of Florence, and he knew that when on their return they reached a certain house in Florence, the twentieth mile would have been completed. They reached the house, he proposed, and was accepted. But, ah, alas for him, the lady, after marriage, bought a bicycle and gave up walking on foot. He, being so short-sighted, was unable to ride a bicycle, and the marriage of reason failed to bring that bliss which he had fully expected it would produce.
One of the men whose life has always interested me was Apollinarius
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Sidonius. Apollinarius Sidonius was a Frenchman at the time of the Barbarian Invasion. A very cultivated gentleman, somewhat in the Bloomsbury style, he devoted himself to writing poems which you can read backwards and forwards equally well - a line would begin with 'amor' and end with 'Roma' - and it was a skill that was much admired among the Bloomsburyites of that period, to write poems that you could read backwards or forwards equally. Well, he devoted himself to this pursuit very successfully and very happily, but then the barbarians came and this rather interfered. It did not interfere exactly in the way that one would think from reading about the Barbarian Invasion. It interfered in a different way. He writes to a friend and says: 'It's such a bore, I have to dine with Germans tonight and they have such bad table-manners.' And this is what the Barbarian Invasion was in real life. However, in the end their table-manners so shocked him that he became a very earnest Christian, a bishop, and died fighting the Germans in the great cause of culture in order that the pursuit of poems to be read backwards and forwards might continue throughout future ages.
I had always been told throughout my youth of the fanaticism of the Mohammedans, and especially that story of the destruction of the library at Alexandria. Well, I believed all these stories, but when I came to look into the history of the times concerned, I had a great many shocks. In the first place, I discovered that the library of Alexandria was destroyed a great many times, and the first time was by Julius Caesar, simply because he couldn't get a hot bath any other way. But the last time was supposed to have been by the Mohammedans, and for this I found no justification whatsoever. Nor did I find that the Mohammedans were fanatical. On the contrary, the Christians of that time were extraordinarily fanatical. The contests between Catholics, Nestorians, and Monophysites were bitter and persecuting to the last degree. But the Mohammedans, when they conquered Christian countries, allowed the Christians to be perfectly free, provided they paid a tribute. The only penalty for being a Christian was that you had to pay a tribute that Mohammedans did not have to pay. This proved completely successful, and the immense majority of the population became Mohammedan, but not through any fanaticism on the part of the Mohammedans. On the contrary they, in the earlier centuries of their power, represented free thought and tolerance to a degree that the Christians did not emulate until quite recent times. This is one of the stock lies of history, of which there are a great many.
I found a very interesting story in the history of Japan. Japan, as everyone knows, had a period when Christian missionaries, especially Jesuits, had very great success in converting large numbers of Japanese to the Christian faith. And then there was a reaction, and Japan was closed to all foreigners except one Dutch ship every year, and that lasted for a long long time. Well, I didn't know how this had come about until I had
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occasion to study the history of Japan. I then discovered that the first incident that led to this result was the wreck of a British ship on the coast of Japan; and its Captain, Bill Adams, who was a breezy Elizabethan, and, like all Elizabethan sea-faring persons, passionately Protestant, was asked by the Shogun what he thought of the Jesuits, and if he knew anything about them. And he replied: 'Jesuits, Lor luvyer, Sir, I can tell you all about the Jesuits.' And he poured forth Protestant tales about the wickedness of Jesuits, and the Shogun listened entranced. He gave Bill Adams a position at Court, but never would allow him to leave Japan. What we know about him we know from his letters to his wife, very affectionate letters, more ill-spelt letters than any I have ever seen, and from them we know all that he told the Shogun and all that the Shogun thought about what he told.
Just after the Shogun had learnt these stories about the Jesuits, a Spanish ship proceeding from Macao to Panama was wrecked on the coast of Japan. The local populace started immediately to ransack the ship and steal all it contained in the way of rich merchandise. The Spanish Captain appealed to the local Daimio and said, 'Look, these people are thieves, they're stealing the cargo, will you stop it?' 'Oh, yes,' said the Daimio, 'they have no right to the cargo, it belongs to me.' So then the Spanish Captain, nothing daunted, went up to see the Shogun and said, 'Look here, the local Daimio is stealing my cargo. Do you think you could stop it?' 'Oh, yes,' said the Shogun, 'of course it doesn't belong to him. It belongs to me.' Thereupon the Captain, who was not perhaps quite as wise as a Captain should be, threatened him and said: 'On the contrary, the cargo belongs to the King of Spain, the King of Spain is very powerful and if you steal the cargo you will incur his displeasure.' 'The King of Spain,' said the Shogun, 'Who is he?' (having never heard of him). The Spanish Captain thereupon produced a map of the world in which the Spanish dominions were all coloured green. they embraced at that time very large parts of Europe and the whole of North and South America. The Shogun was somewhat impressed, and said: 'How did the King of Spain acquire these large dominions ?' 'Oh,' said the Captain, 'he sends missionaries to these places who convert the people to Christianity. The Christians become a fifth column, and set to work to see to it that their Government is overthrown and their country is subordinated to Spain.' 'Ho, Ho,' said the Shogun, 'we'll have no more missionaries in this country.' Thereupon he made ten years preparation, and on a given day he had every Christian in Japan massacred. And this was the beginning of the two and a half centuries during which only one Dutch ship a year was allowed into Japan. The period of anti-Christianity was brought to an end by Commodore Perry, who, supported by gunboats and a powerful navy, compelled the Japanese to become tolerant to the doctrines of the Sermon on the Mount.
One of the myths of history is Brutus, especially in England where we
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take our view of him from Shakespeare's Julius Caesar. I discovered with infinite sorrow that Brutus was not the splendid fellow he is said to be by Shakespeare. You find in one of Cicero's letters, when Cicero was Governor of a province, that he found a private army besieging a certain city in his province. He went to the Commander of the army and said, 'What are you doing here?' And the Commander said, 'Oh, we were hired by Brutus to besiege this city.' 'Why?' said Cicero. 'Why?' 'Because Brutus had lent them money at sixty per cent and they thought twelve per cent would be enough interest to pay, and he thought no, they must pay the sixty per cent and so he hired an army to besiege them.' Now Cicero and Brutus belonged to the same political party, and Cicero found this rather painful, so he wrote to Brutus and besought him to be more merciful, and Brutus very reluctantly consented to reduce the interest to twelve per cent. What is perhaps even more shocking, is that after the assassination of Caesar for claiming to be Emperor, Brutus, in the provinces where he was in control, had coins struck describing himself as Emperor. I have seen such a coin myself and there is no doubt about it, so that I'm afraid we must say that Brutus only objected to Caesar being Emperor, and didn't object when it was he who was the Emperor.
Another matter about which the history books for the most part tell unmitigated lies, or at any rate misrepresentations, is the Crusades. One is told that the Crusades were very great and glorious acts of faith, in which noble men heroically devoted themselves to freeing the Holy Sepulchre from the infidel. This is not quite what really happened. What really happened was that trade in the West in those days was almost entirely in the hands of Jews, and it was found that if you stirred up religious enthusiasm sufficiently, you could get people to go for the Jews; and in fact every Crusade began with pogroms . very extensive pogroms . in every Christian country that took part, and the Crusades were in fact completely successful. At the beginning of them the trade was in the hands of Jews, at the end it was wholly in the hands of Christians. True, the Holy Sepulchre remained in the hands of the Turks, but that had been only a pretext, the real purpose of the Crusades had been achieved.
The philosopher Seneca I found a very interesting person. Everybody knows how it was supposed by Christians in subsequent centuries that he, though not nominally a Christian, had in fact very closely approximated to Christian doctrine and been very sympathetic to it. In fact there were produced letters between Seneca and St Paul which later scholarship pronounced spurious, but which throughout the Middle Ages were universally accepted as genuine, in which it appeared that Seneca and St Paul were practically in agreement. Well, when I came to find out what Seneca really did and said, it was not quite what I had been led to expect. In the first place, he was the Minister to Nero at the time when Nero plotted the murder of his mother, and Seneca certainly was an accomplice
Anecdotes
in that performance. In the second place, I found what very much interested me, that in his capacity of great financier, he lent a lot of money to Boadicea at a very high rate of interest. She after a time found difficulty in paying the interest, and therefore rebelled against Rome, with the result that we all know. At last Nero got tired of him, and sent messengers to say that in view of his great services to the State in the past, he should be allowed to commit suicide instead of being executed. So he set to work to make a will, being in fact enormously rich. But the messenger said that there was not going to be time for a will, and all his property was going to be confiscated to the State, that is to say to Nero. So he could not go on with making a will, and he had to set to work to commit suicide. He got into a bath, opened a small vein, had three secretaries round his bath to take down his last words, and made a most edifying end.
One of the minor characters of the Elizabethan age whom I have found interesting, was Sir John Harrington. Sir John Harrington was a sort of enfant terrible who always amused Queen Elizabeth, so that she could not bring herself to punish him as he apparently sometimes deserved. One of the things that he did, was to be the first inventor of the W.C. The only W.C. in the country was Queen Elizabeth's, and she, I believe, was duly grateful for this. However, on another occasion he translated the only improper canto of Ariosto, and presented the translation to Queen Elizabeth, who professed to be very much shocked and said that this sort of thing must be punished, and she condemned him as a penalty to translate the whole of the rest of Ariosto . a very very long piece of work. He had, however, another side to him. He went to Ireland with Essex and was considered to be Essex's close friend. I discovered what I must say rather shocked me, that he was employed by the Government as a spy upon Essex, and throughout the period when Essex completely trusted him, he was really in the Secret Service with a view to convicting Essex of treachery or traitorous conduct, if possible. He was so much beloved by Essex, that Essex knighted him. This vexed Elizabeth. Originally every knight could confer a knighthood, but nowadays, as everybody knows, only the Sovereign can, and I think that Sir John Harrington was the last, or very nearly the last, to get a knighthood from a subject. He got it from Essex and did his utmost to get Essex condemned.
One of the fundamental divisions in politics is between parties of creditors and parties of debtors. But there is a difficulty if you belong to a party of debtors, and the difficulty is this: that if you win, you instantly become a party of creditors and you therefore have to alter the whole of your programme. One of the most remarkable illustrations of this rule is Julius Caesar. Julius Caesar, in the civil turmoils in Rome, took the side of debtors. When a very young man, he was captured by pirates and held on
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an island. They offered to release him in return for ransom. He asked how much they had demanded, and they told him. He was bitterly outraged and said, 'Oh, you should have asked ten times as much-you evidently did not know what an important man I am. If you ask ten times as much you will certainly get it, but I shall come back and hang every man of you.' They asked ten times as much, they got it, and he did come back and hang every man of them. He belonged to a different sort of political party from that to which Alexander belonged. Alexander, before starting out to destroy the Persian Empire, made treaties with all the Greek States that on no account were there to be vendettas while he was absent. He stood for creditors, Julius Caesar stood for debtors, until such time as he was in a position to take the attitude of the creditor. The same division existed between Protestants and Catholics in early days: Catholics stood for debtors, Protestants for creditors. For this reason, Catholics thought that interest was immoral, Protestants thought that it was not. But gradually, as finance capital came more and more into the hands of Catholics, the Catholics modified their view on this point, as debtors always have as soon as they acquired power.
When I was a very young man I was shown over an Oxford college library by the librarian who had occasion to mention Wycliffe, and to my great delight alluded to him as Professor Wycliffe, making him seem as though he were quite contemporary. I wondered at that time, and indeed for quite a long while afterwards, how it was that Wycliffe during his lifetime had escaped persecution. The reason really was quite simple: it was that the Popes were satellites of the French Government at that time, and the French Government was at war with the British Government, and therefore the Government in England, which in those days was in the hands of John of Gaunt, befriended anybody who was attacking the Pope; and this was how it was that Wycliffe, throughout the whole of his life, escaped persecution. In fact, the University of Oxford at that time defended academic freedom against all ecclesiastical attacks, severe as they were. Later on, when Henry V had conquered France, the matter changed, and Henry V became just as persecuting as the Church could possibly have wished.
If I had more leisure, or a longer life, I should write a book called Shelley the Tough. I got very tired of the ineffectual angel of Matthew Arnold's criticism: Shelley, in fact, was not at all that sort of person. You will remember that when he was a schoolboy, he was always asked by the other schoolboys at Eton to raise the devil, which he did, by means of magical incantations and so forth, and altogether he was considered by the others at Eton to be a very tough customer. You will, no doubt, remember also that he was an extremely good shot with the pistol, much better than Byron or any of Byron's friends, who went in for being toughs. There was
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one occasion when Shelley and Byron were both living in Pisa, and Shelley went out with Byron's bravos into the country, and they were pursued by the town.guard of Pisa, which considered these men ruffians. All of the bravos fled, with the exception of Shelley, who single-handed routed all the municipal worthies of Pisa and was left holding the field. I think altogether that he should be represented in that line. I live in a place where he supported his friend Maddox [sic; Madoc?] in disfiguring one of the great beauties of North Wales, in the interests of modern industrialism. This is what Shelley was really like, it was only occasionally that he wrote poems. In fact, he was a tough customer given to revolver shooting and to modern industrialism.
At the time when Parnell was convicted of adultery, and the question arose whether Mr Gladstone should throw him over or not, he told John Morley that he had known ten Prime Ministers, and nine of them he knew to be adulterers. Now among the ten was my grandfather; I have always hoped that he was the tenth.
It has sometimes been considered remarkable that Napoleon allowed the emigrés to come back to France. I think the reason why he allowed this is quite plain. He had been a scholarship boy at the military academy at Brienne, and had been looked down upon by the scions of ancient nobility who were his schoolfellows. When he became Emperor, he had a chance to see these people who had treated him with contumely when he was a boy, bowing down before him and seeking to ingratiate themselves with him. [This explanation and the Arabian Night feel of it is also in 'Conquest of Happiness', I think - RW] I think it was the pleasure of this that caused him to allow them to come home. He was, of course, not at all above that sort of pleasure: he would throw his hat into a corner and make a foreign ambassador pick it up. When my grandfather visited him in Elba, which was after his great days were over, he tweaked my grandfather's ear just to show familiarity. And I think it is extremely probable that his sole motive in allowing the emigres to come home was to see these schoolfellows of his bowing down before him.
I find that psychoanalysts and people of that sort do not adopt what would seem to me the right method for discovering the natural human instincts. What they ought to do, if they want for instance to discover the nature of women, is to examine the lives of those very few women who have been exempt from the tyranny of public opinion, that is to say, Empresses Regnant. There are not very many Empresses Regnant in history, and it is a remarkable fact that they generally put their sons to death. I think this fact should be remembered when people talk about maternal affection. On the whole, Empresses Regnant do not encourage the view that a woman is a gentle and kindly creature, even when not compelled to be so by the tyranny of public opinion.
Bishop Colenso, who was a centre of controversy in the days of my parents, had a somewhat unfortunate experience. He went out to South
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Africa to convert the Zulus to Christianity, and he translated the Bible into Zulu. The Zulus read the translation, and parts of it seemed to them excellent. They particularly liked the Book of Joshua, because it glorified the sort of activities that they were in the habit of indulging in. And he had a piece of undeserved good luck: he didn't know the Zulu language quite as well as he thought he did, and instead of saying 'God is Love' he said 'God is Butter'. Now the Zulus were very fond of butter, and this converted them in shoals, so that he had a very good time. But presently, in reading through the sacred book, they came upon the statement that the hare chews the cud. They went to him and said: 'Look, this book you have given us says that the hare chews the cud, but it doesn't.' 'Oh yes,' said Colenso, 'if the Bible says so, it must do so.' But they gave him a hare and said, 'Now you watch and see.' He watched, and being an honest man he had to confess that the hare did not chew the cud. And he wrote home to the missionary society and said to them: 'I am in a great difficulty, the Bible says that the hare chews the cud, and after watching the hare diligently for quite a long time, I find that it does not chew the cud. What am I to do about it?' And the missionary society wrote back and said: 'Since the Bible says that the hare chews the cud you must believe this or be deprived of your salary.' He chose the latter, and from that time onwards he had to live on the charity of the Zulus. I am afraid that this somewhat interfered with the diffusion of Christianity among those people.
When I had occasion to study the works of the Fathers [for 'History of Western Philosophy'? RW] , I was impressed by the difficulties that arose from the inadequacy of the postal system in those days. St Jerome and St Augustine had a long and somewhat difficult correspondence about a great many points of theology. St Jerome lived in Bethlehem, St Augustine lived in Hippo near Carthage, and it took a very long time for letters to get from either of these places to the other. The most acrimonious of their controversies concerned the conduct of St Peter, who, when he was staying with St James, refused all food that was condemned by Jewish law, but when he was staying with St Paul, was quite willing to eat such food. One of these two eminent divines considered that this was time-serving, and the other did not. The letters that were exchanged on the subject took about six months to get from one to the other, and therefore the controversy, which if they had met could have been solved in a few minutes, lasted some twenty years. It had very grave consequences in the history of the early Church.
The social credit scheme which has had very considerable success in winning over public opinion in parts of Canada, was invented by Major Douglas, who wrote a book expounding it. The Labour party did not at first know whether it should adopt this view or whether it should not. It decided to follow the advice of the Sidney Webbs on the point. The Sidney Webbs came to me and said, 'We haven't time to read Major Douglas's
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book. Will you please read it and tell us what we think of it.' So I said I would, and I read the book and I told them that I thought it contained fallacies and that I didn't think the scheme was one which the Labour party ought to adopt. They invited me to lunch to meet Major Douglas, and then and there I conveyed to Major Douglas the Webbs' opinion on his book, and that is the reason why his scheme has never been adopted by the Labour party.
I think that a great many people who admire the poetry of Blake are not aware of his connection with radical movements in the days of the French Revolution. There is a story, a well-authenticated story, about how on a certain occasion he saved the life of Tom Paine. They both belonged to a very very small group of more or less revolutionary people, who used to meet together; and on one occasion Tom Paine, who had just been elected to the Convention in France as the member for Calais, related that he had just been making a speech of a somewhat subversive sort, and Blake said to him, 'Now, you know this is a very dangerous speech and I'm afraid you may get into trouble with the British Government.' 'Oh,' said Tom Paine, 'It's all right, I'm just going off to France, and I'm only going home just to collect my luggage, then I shall go.' And Blake said to him, 'Don't you go home and collect your luggage. Go quite straight to Dover.' And Tom Paine took his advice, went to Dover, got there twenty minutes ahead of Pitt's police, and managed to get on to his boat, and arrived in Calais where he was acclaimed by an enthusiastic multitude. If it had not been for the advice of Blake he would have been put to death at that period.
The Empress Josephine had a very interesting and very remarkable life, full of ups and downs. As everybody knows, she came from the West Indies and was in Paris at the time of the Reign of Terror. Not only that, but she was imprisoned during the Reign of Terror, and was in imminent danger of being guillotined. But, however, she succeeded in not being guillotined, and in getting into intimate relations with Barras, who became the first of the Directors, and when asked what he had done during the Terror, remarked, 'I survived.' And so she survived through the period of the Directoire. However, Barras was getting a little tired of her because she was already elderly, and he decided to marry her off to Napoleon, who was very very young, and who wanted a reward for such an act of self-abnegation, and was given the command of the French army in Italy as a reward. That was how she became Napoleon's wife. Once she had achieved this position she made much use of it. She was a somewhat extravagant lady, and after a time Napoleon began to object to paying her bills. On one occasion, when he had been particularly adamant about her bills, she went to the War Minister and said, 'Now look here, you know perfectly well that if I say one word against you to Napoleon, you will be dismissed from office. Now what I want you to do is to take some part of
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the funds devoted to the war to pay my debts.' The War Minister under this pressure reluctantly consented. Throughout the whole of the forthcoming year, French arms suffered one reverse after another. Genoa, which the French had conquered, fell back and was lost to them, and all this in order to pay Josephine's dressmaker's bill. However, Napoleon was not always compliant. When he returned unexpectedly from Egypt and nobody knew that he was going to come, she was dining tête-a-tête with Barras. Napoleon managed somehow to convey that he was just going to arrive, and she fled quickly from Barras to Napoleon's and her flat. The door was locked and she remained outside; Napoleon was inside, having arrived before her. For twenty-four hours he kept her sitting on the doorstep.
She had another more serious misfortune after Napoleon's fall. When the Emperor Alexander came to Paris, she thought, 'Well, Emperors are my meat, I ought to be able to catch him.' She tried very hard. She invited him to dinner, and following the custom of fashionable ladies of that time, she wore her dress wet in order that it might cling to the figure. The result was that she caught a chill and died, and the Emperor Alexander remained unaffected by her charms.
Her relations with Napoleon had a somewhat unfortunate beginning. On their wedding night, just as Napoleon was getting into bed, Josephine's dog bit him in the calf, which completely spoilt this important occasion. Many years afterwards, when he was divorcing her, he brought this up as a grievance, and it appeared to be one of the reasons why he wished to divorce her.
People are accustomed to treating Greek history in a spirit of reverence which makes events unreal; they do not see those events as being very similar to those of our own time. Take for instance the age of Pericles, always regarded as a sort of great and glorious and shimmering wonder, and never treated in terms of realism. But in fact Pericles was a party boss, who succeeded in establishing himself very largely by corrupt means, and who, when he set to work to build temples on the Acropolis, did so exactly in the same spirit as that which inspired the P.W.A. [Webster gives 'Public Works Administration'] . that is to say, he wanted to prevent unemployment and to cause contentment by the distribution of public money. When he fell, he fell in very much the manner in which bosses fall. He was accused of being corrupt: Phideas, whom he employed in the making of statues, was accused of stealing the gold that should have gone into the making of them, and Aspasia, who appears always, in spite of certain moral dubiousness, as rather splendid, was regarded at the time of the fall of Pericles as just a madam. Altogether, the time was very like modern times, and has only failed to be seen so because it has been treated by scholars who disliked realism.
In the history of the Papacy, there are some episodes that are rather curious and do not invite a clear moral judgement. For example Pope
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Gregory VI, at a time when simony was rife throughout the whole of the Catholic Church, bought the Papacy with a view to abolishing simony. He in fact did abolish simony, and his friend and disciple, Gregory VII, reaped the benefit from it, and established an enormous increase in the power of the Papacy owing to the reforms which Gregory VI introduced by these rather dubious means.
The order of the Templars has had a somewhat smirched reputation owing to the accusations which were brought against it at the time when it was dissolved. It was only through the work of Henry C. Lee [sic] that the truth came to be known about this whole episode. The truth as it appeared from Henry C. Lee's investigations was as follows: The Templars had become enormously rich and had immense landed estates throughout Western Christendom. The Pope at that time lived at Avignon, and was entirely subservient to the King of France; the King of France was extravagant and had debts which he saw no means of paying. He went to the Pope and said, 'Look here, the Templars are really much richer than anybody ought to be, and it seems to me that you and I together could confiscate all their estates. You declare them heretics, and I will use the secular arm to dispossess them, and we will divide their property fifty-fifty, and in that way we shall each get a good thing out of it.' The Pope said, 'Done!' and it was done. On a given day, all the leading Templars were arrested, they were all tortured on the rack, they all confessed that they had kissed the devil's arse, and their property was taken away from them. And the Pope and the King of France were enabled to pay their debts.
In the examinations for the Civil Service which existed in China until early in the present century, there was a question that was set which said: 'Once upon a time a Chinese sage preached non-resistance, and Chinese soldiers threw down their arms, with the consequence that the doctrines of the sage had to be suppressed. Now the same doctrine was taught by Christ, whose authority was unquestioned throughout the West. But the effect upon Western soldiers was not that which it had been upon Chinese soldiers. How do you account for this?' History does not relate how Chinese examinees replied to this question.
Rome, since it became great, has been three times sacked. The first and third of these sacks were events of world-shaking importance, the second was not. The first of the sacks was that of A.D. 410 when the Goths invaded Rome. This occasion led to St Augustine's City of God in which he promulgated a doctrine which enabled the Roman Church to survive the long centuries during which the eternal city was eclipsed. The second sack of Rome, which was a comparatively obscure event, occurred in A.D. 846, and the people who made the sack were the Saracens, but they shortly retired, and left no permanent mark upon history. The third sack of Rome, which occurred in A.D. 1527, was a very curious and confused
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occurrence. A German Emperor, who was fighting in defence of the Catholic religion, was fighting against the Pope, who was a Renaissance Medici, and the German Emperor was fighting with a French General and an army of Protestants. The French General and the army of Protestants succeeded in defeating the Pope, thereby re-establishing the authority of the Catholic faith. The results were two. On the one hand there was a great increase of Catholic piety, and on the other hand there was an end to the Renaissance. The previous Medici Pope, Leo X, when he was ill had had a large number of leading citizens of Rome sacrifice a bull of Jupiter on the Capitol, with a view to promoting his recovery. This sort of thing no longer occurred after the Protestant army had established the holiness of the Papacy.
Posthumous fame is a very curious thing. The philosopher Epicurus, who gave rise to the word 'epicure' to denote a man very fond of good eating, was in fact a man of quite extraordinary abstemiousness. He lived upon dry bread, except on feast days when he allowed himself a little cheese. It seems odd that this man should have given rise to the word 'epicure'. The fact that he did so was due to the malignancy of the Stoic School, which was never tired of throwing stones and casting aspersions upon Epicurus and his whole sect. The Stoics stood for a lofty morality, Epicurus stood for a much more humdrum morality. But it was Epicurus and not the Stoics who behaved in a moral manner in the controversy.
Traditional Chinese history is somewhat curious. After some millennia of Emperors who succeed each other one after another and are plainly legendary, we suddenly come upon a man who is universally known as the First Emperor. He was, in fact, the first who is fully historical. He was a fascist, and he established fascism during the period of his lifetime throughout his domains in China. He burnt the books expressing previous philosophies except for books on agriculture and necromancy. These he thought valuable and preserved, the rest he destroyed. He made a mistake in tactics; and it was that he cut the salaries of the litterati [sic] who were the people who [not only] controlled history in China, but in fact, the only organs of publicity of the time, and, consequently the litterati gave him a very bad press. When he died they decided that this sort of regime wouldn't do. His son was a rather feeble fellow, and they invented a plan by which they would get rid of him. On one occasion there was a very impressive public procession, on a State occasion, and everybody appeared on his very finest charger. The Ministers who surrounded the Second Emperor were determined to make him feel a little queer, and one of their number, instead of being mounted on a horse, was mounted on a camel. The Emperor turned to them and said, 'Why is that man on a camel?' They tapped their foreheads, looked at each other, and said, 'Camel, Your Majesty? I don't see any camel.' And the poor fellow thought he was mad.
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They pursued this policy with one incident after another, and in the end the poor fellow abdicated on the ground that he was insane, and that was the end of that sort of regime. [Cf my notes on Thailand, where I heard the same story but with an elephant]
In Tzarist Russia there was a sect for which I had great respect because it gave more attention to logic than is customary in ordinary life. It was called the Runners. It held two precepts, each of which seemed to me unquestionable. The first of these precepts was that you should not receive the impress of Anti.Christ, which seemed to me entirely sound. The second was perhaps even more evident; it was that Peter the Great was AntiChrist. Now, it followed from this that you should not accept a Russian passport because it contains the impress of the Tzar, who is descended from Peter the Great, who is Anti-Christ. But in Tzarist Russia you were not allowed to stay for more than twenty.four hours in one place unless you had a passport, and so the Runners had to spend their whole life running from place to place. However, there was a lax sect among the Runners which held that one ought to run, but it was so inconvenient that one could be pardoned for not actually doing it, and these people obtained absolution by keeping open.house for those who actually did run, and in this way the sect continued to exist for a long long time.
The history of Athens, during the Peloponnesian War, is generally taught in a manner which is utterly unhistorical. There were two parties in Athens: the Democrats and the Aristocrats. The Democrats were vulgar and are held up to opprobrium, the Aristocrats are admired; but in actual fact, since Sparta was aristocratic, the aristocrats in Athens tended to be quislings, and to be traitorous and on the side of Sparta. This however is never taught. Creon, the Democrat, is held up to opprobrium as a vulgarian, although when he was appointed General he won victories. Nicias, the Aristocrat, is admired although he led his country to disaster. He is admired because he was enormously rich and had immense numbers of slaves in the sulphur mines in Sicily, which of course had something to do with his support of the Sicilian expedition. The treachery of the Aristocrats in the navy, which was a particularly aristocratic service, was the ultimate proximate cause of the defeat of Athens in the War. Nevertheless, we are still taught that the Democrats were horrid and vulgar, and the Aristocrats were noble and splendid. And I can even remember during the period when Lloyd George was still a Democrat, children being taught in school that Creon the Democrat was a man like Lloyd George. I wish that the history of Athens could be taught with a little more attention to truth.
I was for a year a Professor in the University of California, and I learnt some rather interesting things about the economic life of California. During the Depression, most people who had land had been unable to pay the interest on their mortgages, and the mortgages, which were generally held by the Bank of America, had been foreclosed, so that the Bank of America
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owned the greater part of the farming land of California. Now the Bank of America was entirely governed by a certain Italian fascist, a man of very extreme reactionary views, who, in spite of being a fascist, was universally accepted as great and grand because he was so rich. I was credibly informed that if one were to say anything against him one would be assassinated. I don't know whether this was true or not, but it certainly was true that he completely governed the University of California, which had to do whatever he told it. He depended largely upon migrant labour, which was very cheap and very much oppressed, and one man at the University made an investigation of migrant labour, and suggested that the only cure for its troubles would be the formation of trade unions among the migrant labourers. As soon as he had published this document, the University decided that he did not do enough research and was a very bad teacher, and he was therefore dismissed from his post. A certain number of people protested against this action, but the supreme authorities in the University ruled any motion in his defence out of order, and he was sacked and destroyed as a teacher.
[Wed 19 July, 95: Note on names: I found the name of the sacked man, in a facsimile of Russell's notes in the present book on p 13, 'Beecham the Lecturer'.
And the following is surely the banker: In 'Encarta' is a brief biography of Amadeo Peter Giannini, 1870-1949, born in San Jose, California. 1904 started 'The Bank of Italy'. 1906 San Francisco earthquake; he salvaged assets and smuggled them under cart of fruits and veg and began trading before anyone else. Bought up small banks and made them into the 'Bank of Italy' too. 1928 Transamerica Corp. 1930: Bank of America National Trust and Savings Association; which made loans to California fruit farmers and lent 'large amounts' to motion picture producers when (says Encarta) no-one else would. 1949: Bank of America largest unincorporated bank in the world, with 3 million depositors and $6 billion assets. >
There has been throughout history, until quite recent times, a conflict between agriculturists and those who went in for pastoral land. This goes a very long way back: one of the most interesting texts in the Bible occurs in Exodus, where it remarks that every shepherd was an abomination unto Egypt. In Egypt they went in for cultivated land and not for pasture, but the Hebrews went in for pasture, and on this ground they had great difficulty in getting themselves admitted into Egypt. This enmity between shepherds and grain growers persisted through the ages, and I found it still in full force when I was in China in 1920. There were no shepherds in China, as in ancient Egypt, but there were shepherds in Mongolia, as in ancient Judaea, and so the Mongolian shepherds became Marxists, since Marx, as every one knows, had lived a pastoral life.
I have sometimes thought, when considering past epochs in history, that I should like to have been a French liberal aristocrat who died in 1788. Some liberal aristocrats of that period, even though they escaped the guillotine, were less fortunate. There was one who went to the theatre in 1788, and when Marie Antoinette came into the Royal Box, he hissed her, because at that time there was the scandal of the diamond necklace. As he was an aristocrat, he was not treated with the severity which anybody else would have been, but he was put into a lunatic asylum on the grounds that only a lunatic would hiss Marie Antoinette. He thought, 'Well, since I'm here for life I may as well settle down.' So he sent for the manager of the lunatic asylum, and he said, 'Look, I'm going to write a history of Rome, will you kindly bring me paper, ink and pens and such books as I may need.' The manager of the asylum said that he would. And our liberal aristocrat settled down to write the history of Rome. He finished it in 1820. He sent again for the manager of the asylum, and said, 'I have
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finished my history and I wish to dedicate it to Louis XVI.' 'The late Louis XVI, you mean.' 'Tiens, il est mort?' said the aristocrat. 'Oh yes, yes, he's dead,' he replied. 'Well, then, Louis XVII.' 'Oh, he's dead too. A lot of things have happened since you have been here. And then there was a certain Napoleon . but it would take too long to tell you about that.' And so the aristocrat retired, bewildered.
In the interval between the Jameson Raid and the outbreak of the Boer War, Lord Loch, who had been Governor of South Africa, paid a call on my grandmother; and when he was gone she said, 'It's extraordinary how living in the Colonies makes people forget how to behave.' So we said, 'What was the matter with Lord Loch?' 'Why,' she said, 'he told me that Mrs Kruger complained that Kruger never took off his trousers till after he'd got into bed.' And that shows that life in the Colonies makes people forget how to behave.
Modern international politics begins with the Boer War, or perhaps even earlier, with the Jameson Raid. When the Jameson Raid proved a fiasco, people were impressed by the vigour with which Chamberlain disowned it. Few people knew, and nobody publicly stated, that because it was being planned, British troops returning from India were brought by way of the Cape so as to be on hand if needed. Still fewer knew that this measure had been sanctioned not only by Chamberlain, but also by the previous Liberal Government. The initial ill success of the British in the Boer War encouraged the Continent to express its hostility, and there was talk of intervention in favour of the Boers by a coalition of France and Germany and Russia. This fell through because their combined navies were not so strong as the British navy, but it frightened the British Government, and made it feel that we needed Continental allies. Joseph Chamberlain offered an alliance to the Germans, but his advances were rebuffed because the Kaiser was determined to have a big navy. Consequently the Foreign Office set to work to make friends with France and Russia. I first heard of this policy before it had been officially adopted, from Sir Edward Grey, then in Opposition.
I first met H. G. Wells in 1902, at a small discussion society created by Sidney Webb and by him christened 'The Co-efficients', in the hope that we should be jointly efficient. There were about a dozen of us. Some have escaped my memory; among those whom I remember, the most distinguished was Sir Edward Grey, then there was H. J. McKinder, afterwards Sir, who was Reader in Geography at the University of Oxford and a great authority on the then new German subject of Geo-politics. What I found most interesting about him, was that he had climbed Kilimanjaro with a native guide who walked barefoot, except in villages, where he wore dancing pumps. Then there was Amory. [Amery - RW. Jewish names often seem misspelt] And there was Commander Bellairs, a breezy naval officer, who was engaged in a perpetual dingdong battle for the parliamentary representation of King's Lynn with an opponent univers
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ally known as Tommy Bowles, a gallant champion of the army. Commander Bellairs was a Liberal, and Tommy Bowles was a Conservative, but after a while Commander Bellairs became a Conservative and Tommy Bowles became a Liberal. They were thus enabled to continue their duel at King's Lynn. In 1902 Commander Bellairs was half.way on the journey from the old party to the new one. And then there was W. A. S. Hewins, the Director of the London School of Economics. Hewins once told me that he had been brought up a Roman Catholic, but had since replaced faith in the Church by faith in the British Empire. He was passionately opposed to free trade, and was successfully engaged in converting Joseph Chamberlain to tariff reform. I know how large a part he had in this conversion, as he showed me the correspondence between himself and Chamberlain before Chamberlain had come out publicly for tariff reform. I very soon found out that I was too much out of sympathy with most of the Co-efficients to be able to profit by the discussions, or contribute usefully to them. All the members except Wells and myself were Imperialists and looked forward without too much apprehension to a war with Germany. I was drawn to Wells by our common antipathy to this point of view. He was a Socialist and at that time, though not later, considered great wars a folly. Matters came to a head when Sir Edward Grey, then in Opposition, advocated what became the policy of the Ententes with France and Russia, which was adopted by the Conservative Government some two years later, and solidified by Sir Edward Grey when he became Foreign Secretary. I spoke vehemently against this policy, which I felt led straight to world war, but no one except Wells agreed with me. At one of the meetings of the Coefficients, Amory, then still quite young, discussed various possible wars, and his eyes beamed with joy as he said, 'If we fight America we shall have to arm the whole adult male population.' I was in those days still somewhat naïve, and when the Russian navy fired upon British fishermen at the Dogger Bank, I was pleased with Arthur Balfour, of whom in general I thought ill, because he treated the incident in a conciliatory spirit. I did not then realise that he was only preparing bigger and better wars. Still less did I realise that during the General Election of 1906, when the Liberals were supported largely because they were thought less bellicose than the Tories, Sir Edward Grey, without the knowledge of the country, or Parliament, or even the majority of the Cabinet, inaugurated the military and naval conversations with France which committed us in honour to the support of France in war, although Sir Edward Grey repeatedly affirmed in Parliament that we were not committed. Our agreement with France committed us to support the French conquest of Morocco, which was a wholly unjustified imperialist venture and led to violent quarrels with Germany. Our support of Russia had even worse consequences. The Russian Government suppressed the revolt of 1905 with great barbarity, especially in Poland. The Russians also invaded Northern Persia, and induced Sir Edward
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Grey to join them in defeating Morgan Shuster's efforts to introduce an orderly constitutional régime to that country. Every Tzarist atrocity was minimised by Sir Edward Grey, who did everything that public opinion would tolerate to discourage support for Russian and Polish rebels. I became so interested in Persian affairs that I wrote about them with indignation against the British Government. In consequence, a young man at the Persian Legation came to see me to express gratitude, and when he had finished with politics he sang Persian poems to me and explained his theological opinions. I said, 'You do not seem very orthodox.' But he replied, 'Oh, yes I am. My views are those of one of the recognised orthodox sects, namely the Sufis.' He was young, beautiful, idealistic and poetic. Thirty years later in a hotel in Cambridge, I met a fat middle.aged Persian bureaucrat who informed me that he was the Minister of Education. It was the same man.
In the days when the outbreak of war was visibly approaching, I hoped against hope that England might remain neutral. I knew the Kaiser's Germany, though it had many faults, was more liberal than any Continental regime of the present day, except those of Holland and Scandinavia. Tzarist Russia had filled all liberal.minded people with horror for a long time and I found the thought of going to war in support of it intolerable. I induced a large number of Cambridge Dons to sign a letter to the Press urging neutrality. The day after the war began nine-tenths of them expressed regret at having signed it. The Nation, the liberal weekly edited by Massingham, had an editorial lunch every Tuesday; I went to this lunch on 4 August and found Massingham and his assistant editors all passionately in favour of neutrality. Then hours later England entered the war, and Massingham wrote to me next morning beginning, 'Today is not yesterday . . .' and retracting everything that he had said before. Almost all those who throughout the previous years had opposed Sir Edward Grey, became overnight his passionate supporters. Their excuse was the German invasion of Belgium. I had known for years from friends in the Staff college that it was quite certain that the Germans would invade Belgium in the event of a war. I was amazed to find that leading politicians and journalists had been ignorant of this easily ascertainable fact, and that all their public utterances had been due to this ignorance.
There were various facts about the origins of the war which were kept dark. Long after it was over, I learnt that before the assassination of [sic] Sarajevo, its imminence was announced by the Serbian Prime Minister to his Cabinet. One of the crucial facts precipitating general war was the mobilisation of the Russian army which was ordered by the War Minister, Sokolnikov, without the knowledge of the Tzar. It was this that led the Germans to break off negotiations with Russia and declare war. But Sokolnikov's patriotism was of a peculiar sort. When the French and English sent supplies to Russia, Sokolnikov sold them to the Germans. Unfortun
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ately for him, the Russian Revolution cut short his enjoyment of the proceeds.
It was my first experience of mass hysteria on a large scale and I had considerable inward difficulty in withstanding it. I used to think in buses or trains, 'if these people knew what I think, they would tear me to pieces.'
The Press was filled with untrue atrocity stories. But anyone who questioned them was regarded as a traitor. I was told later on good authority [possibly Arthur Ponsonby's book Falsehood in Wartime (London, 1928) - RW 1997] that moving pictures of atrocities were manufactured by a cinema company in the Bois du Boulogne, and sold to belligerents on both sides impartially, with only a change of captions. The story that the Germans used human corpses to make gelatine was quite deliberately invented by a young man in a Government office in London, but nevertheless it proved very effective and was one of the main causes of the Chinese entry into the war on our side. The supposed idealistic aims of the war gave people an excuse for letting loose a great deal of ferocity, which the decencies of civilised life had until then compelled them to conceal. I remember at a time when the war was going badly and there was some talk of peace, Sidney Webb remarked: 'We must keep the soldiers' noses to the grindstone.' This was a not uncommon attitude among those not liable to military service on account of age or sex or holy orders. Patriotism of course had its limits. When at the outbreak of the war a coalition Government was established, it contained Sir Edward Carson, who had recently bought arms from the Kaiser for use against the British Government, and Bonar Law, whose brother sold arms to the Germans after the outbreak of war. I wrote to a friend in America pointing out how much these men strengthened the war effort, but I think the censorship prevented my letter from arriving. I learnt many years later that in the middle of the war, the Directors of the Nobel Company, of whom some were German, some English, some French, had met in Holland and discussed the affairs of the company which was, naturally, flourishing. In 1917 peace negotiations were well advanced and would probably have been successfully concluded but for the fact that America's entry into the war was obviously imminent. If these negotiations had been allowed to proceed to a successful termination, Kerensky's Government might have survived and Russia would almost certainly have had something better than the Communist regime. Germany would not have been ruined, and there would have been no chance of a Nazi regime. It may therefore be said that we owe both the Nazis and the Communists to Wilson's determination to make the world safe for democracy. The Hang-the-Kaiser election immediately after the armistice was disgraceful both to the country and to the Government. The Government agreed, in reply to popular clamour, that an indemnity of 26 billions should be asked of the Germans. When, after the election, somebody suggested to Lloyd George that this sum was impossibly high, he replied: 'My dear fellow, if the elec
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tion had lasted three weeks longer, the Germans would have had to pay 50 billions.' Lloyd George then and throughout the negotiations in Versailles was perfectly aware that a vindictive public opinion was demanding impossibilities, but he nevertheless proclaimed this awareness and was cynically willing to ruin the world for the sake of his majority.
Review of Bertrand Russell: America 1945-1970 Barry Feinberg: Bertrand Russell's America, 1945-1970
Survey of Russell on 20th century USA but edited by Jews, December 8, 2011
First of two volumes with similar format, dealing with Russell's life in, and writings on, the USA. Volume 1 was published in 1973, shortly after Russell's death; in the period up to 1945, Russell lived, travelled, lectured, and wrote in the USA for a number of years in total.
Shows Russell as a Dishonest Aristocrat in Thrall to Jews © Rae West 2000; First uploaded 2000-07-31
Russell talked to Lenin for an hour, saw Trotsky at the opera, listened to Kamenev, and was 'acquainted' with Sverdlov, the 'Acting Minister of Transport'. He also met, and liked, Gorky: '.. very ill... heartbroken.. begged me.. always to emphasize what Russia had suffered. He supports the Government.. because the possible alternatives are worse. One felt.. a love of the Russian people.. All the intellectuals whom I met—a class who have suffered terribly—expressed their gratitude to him..' (pp 38-39)
Review of Bertrand Russell Prospects of Industrial Civilization
From a 1934 partwork 'Concise Universal Biography'. Russell received plenty of uncritical media adulation. Unless he wandered into Jewish territory, which only happened late in his life.
Review of Century-old socionomy futurology futuronomy Bertrand Russell: The Impact of Science on Society
Review of Bertrand Russell Bertrand Russell: Dear Bertrand Russell: Selection of His Correspondence with the General Public, 1950-68 (edited by two Jews, Feinberg & Kasrils)
Review of Bertrand Russell Bertrand Russell: War Crimes in Vietnam
Vietnam—some of the (very repellent) truth by a very skilful writer, October 18, 2010
Review of Vietnam War Edited by John Duffet: Against the Crime of Silence: Proceedings of the Russell International War Crimes Tribunal (Stockholm, Copenhagen) (Foreword by Ralph Schoenman)
Misleadingly-titled and Unoriginal Book; Presumably a PotBoiler
Review of Good wide view of, mostly, traditional philosophy. Not Jew-aware Bertrand Russell: History of Western Philosophy and its Connection with Political and Social Circumstances from the Earliest Times to the Present Day 
Bertrand Russell wanted to invent a new science of human power. Review notes: June 26, 2010/ 4 Sept 2013/ 4 Sept 2014/ 18 March 2015/ 4 July 2015/ 18 Sept 2015/ 16 November 2017 on Germany, Jews, and WW2/ 2 May 2018/ 11 May 2018/ and later comments, up to 17 Jan 2024
He says nothing much about the 'British' Empire as it was called (i.e. the second, excluding the earlier north American empire), though it must have been a significant part of his worldview. (The 1924 Exhibition at Wembley was only about fifteen years earlier; in 1933 the Japanese walked out of the League of Nations, apparently protesting against the hypocrisy of the British retaining their own Empire). Good King Charles's Golden Days from the Vicar of Bray are mentioned; but the days were not golden for everyone. Thus there's a section on Mussolini fire-bombing in Abyssinia—but not on the British bombing Iraq at the same time. Russell doesn't attempt to distinguish the NSDAP (bottom up) from Italian Fascism (top down), in the conventional manner of doing everything possible not to analyse them. His comments on 'Jews' are completely conventional (and yet he had seen for himself 'Jewish' groups taking over and inventing the USSR, and knew about Bela Kun in Hungary and Kurt Eisner in Germany). Hitler and Stalin are regarded as worshipping Wotan and Dialectical Materialism (in this way Russell is spared the examination of their actual writings and deeds and associates; it's similar to 'oriental despotism', a phrase also used by Russell). Japan has 'dangerous thoughts' as a problem, but apparently nowhere else. Secret societies are attributed in particular to Italy—Freemasonry in France and Britain is ignored, despite being enormously more important. The Spanish Inquisition is frowned upon; and yet Spain was unique in having the problem of dealing with both 'Jews' and Muslims, both holding as a religious axiom a belief in telling lies. Russell is aware of power behind the scenes; but his only named example is Baron Holstein of the German Foreign Office under the Kaiser. Russell says Liberals and democrats led 'the revolt against Spain in Latin America'—when it was part of American imperialism. There are some references in Russell's oeuvre to sadism; note of course that idea is implicitly attributed to a Frenchman. His example of political assassination is by Napoleon III, not any of the numerous 'Jewish' murders, such as British Prime Minister Spencer Perceval, over Jewish money and the then-new USA. 'It would be a mistake to suppose that big business, under Fascism, controls the State more than it does in England, France, or America. On the contrary, in Italy and Germany the State has used the fear of Communism to make itself supreme over big business as over everything else.' — 'communism' is, incorrectly, not attributed by Russell to 'Jews'. He loathes the German philosopher Fichte, giving a quotation on children made impassive by miseducation, and yet many British and especially Jewish 'thinkers' had essentially identical ideas. Fichte and Nietzsche are more or less pointed out as believing they are 'God', and yet the Talmud makes Jews and/or their priests God or his superior. His brief examination of fanaticism includes Biblical references, early Islam, Cromwell, and of course Germany, Japan, and Italy, but carefully avoids fanaticisms of the US and UK (British War with US? Opium Wars? US Civil War? British Empire? Boer Wars? Great War?) and in Talmudic writings. He quotes that Lutherans in Germany had an almost slavish subservience to state power, but does not point out the same thing as regards the Church of England. He says 'freedom of propaganda was destroyed' in France in 1793, Russia in 1918, and Germany in 1993, but has no idea of the extent of suppression by, for example, the BBC. He states that 'commerce has lost its importance' since the days of shipping and trading companies, concealing the way in which many commodities (such as oil) are subsumed under (for example) artificial countries and artificial leaders designed for the purpose.
Review of Bertrand Russell NWO Bertrand Russell: Authority and the Individual
March 2017
Review of Utopians Bertrand Russell: Roads to Freedom: Socialism, Anarchism & Syndicalism
Review of Bertrand Russell Katharine Tait: My Father, Bertrand Russell
Review of Bertrand Russell Rupert Crawshay-Williams: Russell Remembered
Collection of Essays on the Theory and Practical Application of Ethics. BUT freighted with Judaic Ethics from Christianity, and Cold War and Other Wrong 'Useful Idiot' Assumptions.
Oct 2015
