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Then I told them that I wanted a Frenchman but that any blinking Frenchiewouldn’t do . . . that mine was a psychological school and any teacher had tobe not only an expert in his subject but also in handling neurotic kids.Apart from this display of what you call Bumbledom I guess that there willthe autobiography of bertrand russell 402be some battle when Trevelyan’s Committee on Private Schools issues itsreport. You and I will have to ?ght like hell against having a few stupidinspectors mucking about demanding why Tommy can’t read. Any inspectorcoming to me now would certainly be greeted by Colin (aged 6) with thefriendly words, ‘Who the fucking hell are you?’ So that we must ?ght to keepWhitehall out of our schools.I’ll let you know what happens.Many thanks,YoursA. S. NeillAbout time that you and I met again and compared notes.Leiston. 31.12.30Dear RussellYou have done the deed. The letter [from the Ministry of Labour] is a nastyone but I guess that the bloke as wrote it was in a nasty position. Sounds tome like a good prose Hymn of Hate.I have agreed to his conditions . . . feeling like slapping the blighter in theeye at the same time. It is my ?rst experience with the bureaucracy and I amapt to forget that I am dealing with a machine.Many thanks for your ready help. My next approach to you may be whenthe Committee on Private Schools gets busy. They will call in all the respect-able old deadheads of education as expert witnesses (Badley and Co) andunless men of moment like you make a ?ght for it we (the out and outerBolshies of education) will be ignored. Then we’ll have to put up with thenice rules advocated by the diehards. Can’t we get up a league of hereticaldominies called the ‘Anal’-ists?Yours with much gratitudeA. S. Neill5th Jan. 31Dear NeillThank you for your letter and for the information about your Frenchteacher. I am sorry you accepted the Ministry of Labour’s terms, as they wereon the run and could, I think, have been induced to grant unconditionalpermission.I suppose you do not mind if I express to Miss Bond?eld my low opinionof her o?cials, and to Trevelyan my ditto of Miss Bond?eld? It is quitepossible that the Ministry may still decide to let you keep your present masterinde?nitely. I am going away for a short holiday, and I am therefore dictatingthese letters now to my secretary who will not send them until she hearssecond marriage 403from you that you are willing they should go. Will you therefore be so kindas to send a line to her (Mrs O. Harrington), and not to me, as to whether youare willing the letters should go.Yours everBertrand RussellNeill agreed to my sending the following letters:To Miss Bond?eld12th Jan. 31Dear Miss Bond?eldI am much obliged to you for looking into the matter of Mr A. S. Neill’sFrench teacher. I doubt whether you are aware that in granting him permissionto retain his present teacher for one year your o?ce made it a condition that heshould not even ask to retain his present teacher after the end of that year.I do not believe that you have at any time been in charge of a school, but ifyou had, you would know that to change one’s teachers once a year is toincrease enormously the di?culty of achieving any kind of success. Whatwould the headmaster of one of our great public schools say to your o?ce if itwere to insist that he should change his teachers once a year? Mr Neill isattempting an experiment which everybody interested in modern educationconsiders very important, and it seems a pity that the activities of the Govern-ment in regard to him should be con?ned to making a fair trial of the experi-ment impossible. I have no doubt whatever that you will agree with me in this,and that some subordinate has failed to carry out your wishes in this matter.With apologies for troubling you,I remainYours sincerelyBertrand RussellTo Charles Trevelyan12th Jan. 31Dear CharlesThank you very much for the trouble you have taken in regard to theFrench teacher at A. S. Neill’s school. The Ministry of Labour have grantedhim permission to stay for one year, but on condition that Neill does not askto have his leave extended beyond that time. You will, I think, agree with methat this is an extraordinary condition to have made. Neill has accepted it, ashe has to yield to force majeure, but there cannot be any conceivable justi?cationfor it. Anybody who has ever run a school knows that perpetual change ofmasters is intolerable. What would the Headmaster of Harrow think if theMinistry of Labour obliged him to change his masters once a year?the autobiography of bertrand russell 404Neill is trying an experiment which everybody interested in educationconsiders most important, and Whitehall is doing what it can to makeit a failure. I do not myself feel bound by Neill’s undertaking, and I see noreason why intelligent people who are doing important work should submittamely to the dictation of ignorant busybodies, such as the o?cials in theMinistry of Labour appear to be. I am quite sure that you agree with mein this.Thanking you again,Yours very sincerelyBertrand RussellTo and from A. S. Neill27th Jan. 31Dear NeillAs you will see from the enclosed, there is nothing to be got out of theMinistry of Labour.I have written a reply which I enclose, but I have not sent it. If you thinkit will further your case, you are at liberty to send it; but remember MissBond?eld is celibate.Yours everBertrand RussellThe enclosed reply to the Ministry of Labour:27th Jan. 31Dear SirThank you very much for your letter of January 26th. I quite understandthe principle of con?ning employment as far as possible to the British with-out regard for e?ciency. I think, however, that the Ministry is not applyingthe principle su?ciently widely. I know many Englishmen who have marriedforeigners, and many English potential wives who are out of a job. Would nota year be long enough to train an English wife to replace the existing foreignone in such cases?Yours faithfullyBertrand RussellSummerhill SchoolLeiston, Su?olk28.1.31Dear RussellNo, there is no point in replying to the people. Very likely the chief aim ingovt o?ces is to save the face of the o?cials. If my man wants to stay on latersecond marriage 405I may wangle it by getting him to invest some cash in the school and teach on?? ?? ???????? of labour. Anyway you accomplished a lot as it is. Manythanks. I think I’ll vote Tory next time!Today I have a letter from the widow of Norman MacMunn. She seems tobe penniless and asks me for a job as matron. I can’t give her one and don’tsuppose you can either. I have advised her to apply to our millionaire friendsin Dartington Hall. I am always sending on the needy to them . . . hatingthem all the time for their a?uence. When Elmhirst needs a new wing hewrites out a cheque to Heals . . . Heals! And here am I absolutely gravelled toraise cash for a pottery shed. Pioneering is a wash out, man. I am gettingweary of cleaning up the mess that parents make. At present I have a lad of sixwho shits his pants six times daily . . . his dear mamma ‘cured’ him bymaking him eat the shit. I get no gratitude at all . . . when after years of labourI cure this lad the mother will send him to a ‘nice’ school. It ain’t goodenough . . . o?cial indi?erence or potential enmity, parental jealousy . . . theonly joy is in the kids themselves. One day I’ll chuck it all and start a nicehotel round about Salzburg.You’ll gather that I am rather fed up this morning. I’d like to meet you againand have a yarn. Today my Stimmung is partly due to news of another debt . . .￡150 this last year all told. All parents whose problems I bettered.YoursA. S. NeillI wonder what Margaret Bond?eld’s views would be on my views onOnanie!31st Jan. 31Dear NeillI am sorry you are feeling so fed up. It is a normal mood with me so far asthe school is concerned. Parents owe me altogether about ￡500 which I shallcertainly never see. I have my doubts as to whether you would ?nd hotelkeeping much better. You would ?nd penniless pregnant unmarried womenleft on your hands, and would undertake the care of them and their childrenfor the rest of their natural lives. You might ?nd this scarcely more lucrativethan a modern school. Nobody can make a living, except by dishonesty orcruelty, at no matter what trade.It is all very sad about Elmhirst. However, I always think that a man whomarries money has to work for his living. I have no room for a Matron at themoment, having at last obtained one who is completely satisfactory.I have sometimes attempted in a mild way to get a little ?nancial supportfrom people who think they believe in modern education, but I have foundthe thing that stood most in my way was the fact which leaked out, that I dothe autobiography of bertrand russell 406not absolutely insist upon strict sexual virtue on the part of the sta?. I foundthat even people who think themselves quite advanced believe that only thesexually starved can exert a wholesome moral in?uence.Your story about the boy who shits in his pants is horrible. I have not hadany cases as bad as that to deal with.I should very much like to see you again. Perhaps we could meet inLondon at some time or other...YoursBertrand RussellFrom Mrs Bernard Shaw Ayot St LawrenceWelwyn, Herts.28 Oct. 1928Dear Bertrand RussellI was grateful and honoured by your splendidness in sending me your MS.of your lecture and saying I may keep it. It’s wonderful of you. I have read itonce, and shall keep it as you permit until I have time for another good, quietgo at it.You know you have a humble, but convinced admirer in me. I have a verystrong mystical turn in me, which does not appear in public, and I ?nd yourstu? the best corrective and steadier I ever came across!My best remembrances to you both. I hope the school is ?ourishing.Yours gratefullyC. F. ShawTo C. P. Sanger Telegraph HouseHarting, Peters?eld23 Dec. 1929My dear CharlieI am very sorry indeed to hear that you are so ill. I do hope you will soonbe better. Whenever the Doctors will let me I will come and see you. It is ayear today since Kate’s operation, when you were so kind – I remember howKate loved your visits. Dear Charlie, I don’t think I have ever expressed thedeep a?ection I have for you, but I suppose you have known of it.I got home three days ago and found everything here satisfactory. Thechildren are ?ourishing, and it is delicious to be at home. One feels very faro? in California and such places. I went to Salt Lake City and the Mormonstried to convert me, but when I found they forbade tea and tobacco I thoughtit was no religion for me.My warmest good wishes for a speedy recovery,Yours very a?ectionatelyBertrand Russellsecond marriage 407From Lord RutherfordNewnham CottageQueen’s RoadCambridgeMarch 9, 1931Dear Bertrand RussellI have just been reading with much interest and pro?t your book TheConquest of Happiness & I would like to thank you for a most stimulatingand I think valuable analysis of the factors concerned. The chief point whereI could not altogether agree was in your treatment of the factors of envy& jealousy. Even in the simple – and I agree with you – fundamentally happylife of the scienti?c man, one has naturally sometimes encountered examplesof this failing but either I have been unusually fortunate or it may be tooobtuse to notice it in the great majority of my friends. I have known anumber of men leading simple lives whether on the land or in the laboratorywho seemed to me singularly free from this failing. I quite agree with youthat it is most obtrusive in those who are unduly class-conscious. Theseremarks are not in criticism but a mere personal statement of my ownobservations in these directions.I was very sorry to hear of the sudden death of your brother whom I knewonly slightly, and I sympathise with you in your loss. I hope, however, youwill be interested enough to take some part in debates in the House of Lordsin the future.Yours sincerelyRutherfordthe autobiography of bertrand russell 40812LATER YEARS OFTELEGRAPH HOUSEWhen I left Dora, she continued the school until after the beginning of theSecond War, though after 1934 it was no longer at Telegraph House. John andKate were made wards in Chancery and were sent to Dartington school wherethey were very happy.I spent a summer at Hendaye and for part of another summer took theGerald Brenans’ house near Malaga. I had not known either of the Brenansbefore this and I found them interesting and delightful. Gamel Brenansurprised me by turning out to be a scholar of great erudition and wideinterests, full of all sorts of scraps of out-of-the-way knowledge and a poetof haunting and learned rhythms. We have kept up our friendship andshe visits us sometimes – a lovely autumnal person.I spent the summer of 1932 at Carn Voel, which I later gave to Dora. Whilethere, I wrote Education and the Social Order. After this, having no longer the?nancial burden of the school, I gave up writing pot-boilers. And havingfailed as a parent, I found that my ambition to write books that might beimportant revived.During my lecture tour in America in 1931, I had contracted withW. W. Norton, the publisher, to write the book which was published in 1934under the title Freedom and Organization, 1814–1914. I worked at this book incollaboration with Patricia Spence, commonly known as Peter Spence, ?rst ata ?at in Emperor’s Gate (where John and Kate were disappointed to ?ndneither an Emperor nor a gate), and then at Deudraeth Castle in North Wales,which was at that time an annex of Portmeirion Hotel. I very much enjoyedthis work, and I found the life at Portmeirion pleasant. The hotel was ownedby my friends Clough Williams-Ellis, the architect, and his wife, Amabel, thewriter, whose company was delightful.When the writing of Freedom and Organization was ?nished, I decided to returnto Telegraph House and tell Dora she must live elsewhere. My reasons were?nancial. I was under a legal obligation to pay a rent of ￡400 a year forTelegraph House, the proceeds being due to my brother’s second wife asalimony. I was also obliged to pay alimony to Dora, as well as all the expensesof John and Kate. Meanwhile my income had diminished catastrophically.This was due partly to the depression, which caused people to buy muchfewer books, partly to the fact that I was no longer writing popular books,and partly to my having refused to stay with Hearst in 1931 at his castle inCalifornia. My weekly articles in the Hearst newspapers had brought me￡1000 a year, but after my refusal the pay was halved, and very soon I wastold the articles were no longer required. Telegraph House was large, and wasonly approachable by two private drives, each about a mile long. I wished tosell it, but could not put it on the market while the school was there. The onlyhope was to live there, and try to make it attractive to possible purchasers.After settling again at Telegraph House, without the school, I went for aholiday to the Canary Islands. On returning, I found myself, though sane,quite devoid of creative impulse, and at a loss to know what work to do. Forabout two months, purely to a?ord myself distraction, I worked on theproblem of the twenty-seven straight lines on a cubic surface. But this wouldnever do, as it was totally useless and I was living on capital saved duringthe successful years that ended in 1932. I decided to write a book on the dailyincreasing menace of war. I called this book Which Way to Peace? and main-tained in it the paci?st position that I had taken up during the First War. I did,it is true, make an exception: I held that, if ever a world government wereestablished, it would be desirable to support it by force against rebels. But asregards the war to be feared in the immediate future, I urged conscientiousobjection.This attitude, however, had become unconsciously insincere. I had been ableto view with reluctant acquiescence the possibility of the supremacy of theKaiser’s Germany; I thought that, although this would be an evil, it would notbe so great an evil as a world war and its aftermath. But Hitler’s Germany was adi?erent matter. I found the Nazis utterly revolting – cruel, bigoted, andstupid. Morally and intellectually they were alike odious to me. Although Iclung to my paci?st convictions, I did so with increasing di?culty. When, in1940, England was threatened with invasion, I realised that, throughout theFirst War, I had never seriously envisaged the possibility of utter defeat. I foundthis possibility unbearable, and at last consciously and de?nitely decided that Imust support what was necessary for victory in the Second War, howeverdi?cult victory might be to achieve, and however painful in its consequences.the autobiography of bertrand russell 410This was the last stage in the slow abandonment of many of the beliefs thathad come to me in the moment of ‘conversion’ in 1901. I had never been acomplete adherent of the doctrine of non-resistance; I had always recognisedthe necessity of the police and the criminal law, and even during the First WarI had maintained publicly that some wars are justi?able. But I had alloweda larger sphere to the method of non-resistance – or, rather, non-violentresistance – than later experience seemed to warrant. It certainly has animportant sphere; as against the British in India, Gandhi led it to triumph. Butit depends upon the existence of certain virtues in those against whom it isemployed. When Indians lay down on railways, and challenged the author-ities to crush them under trains, the British found such cruelty intolerable.But the Nazis had no scruples in analogous situations. The doctrine whichTolstoy preached with great persuasive force, that the holders of power couldbe morally regenerated if met by non-resistance, was obviously untrue inGermany after 1933. Clearly Tolstoy was right only when the holders ofpower were not ruthless beyond a point, and clearly the Nazis went beyondthis point.But private experience had almost as much to do with changing my beliefsas had the state of the world. In the school, I found a very de?nite andforceful exercise of authority necessary if the weak were not to be oppressed.Such instances as the hatpin in the soup could not be left to the slow oper-ation of a good environment, since the need for action was immediate andimperative. In my second marriage, I had tried to preserve that respect for mywife’s liberty which I thought that my creed enjoined. I found, however, thatmy capacity for forgiveness and what may be called Christian love was notequal to the demands that I was making on it, and that persistence in ahopeless endeavour would do much harm to me, while not achieving theintended good to others. Anybody else could have told me this in advance,but I was blinded by theory.I do not wish to exaggerate. The gradual change in my views, from 1932to 1940, was not a revolution; it was only a quantitative change and a shift ofemphasis. I had never held the non-resistance creed absolutely, and I did notnow reject it absolutely. But the practical di?erence, between opposing theFirst War and supporting the Second, was so great as to mask the considerabledegree of theoretical consistency that in fact existed.Although my reason was wholly convinced, my emotions followed withreluctance. My whole nature had been involved in my opposition to the FirstWar, whereas it was a divided self that favoured the Second. I have never since1940 recovered the same degree of unity between opinion and emotion as Ihad possessed from 1914 to 1918. I think that, in permitting myself thatunity, I had allowed myself more of a creed than scienti?c intelligence canjustify. To follow scienti?c intelligence wherever it may lead me had alwayslater years of telegraph house 411seemed to me the most imperative of moral precepts for me, and I havefollowed this precept even when it has involved a loss of what I myself hadtaken for deep spiritual insight.About a year and a half was spent by Peter Spence, with whom for sometime I had been in love, and me on The Amberley Papers, a record of the brief lifeof my parents. There was something of the ivory tower in this work. Myparents had not been faced with our modern problems; their radicalism wascon?dent, and throughout their lives the world was moving in directions thatto them seemed good. And although they opposed aristocratic privilege, itsurvived intact, and they, however involuntarily, pro?ted by it. They lived in acomfortable, spacious, hopeful world, yet in spite of this I could whollyapprove of them. This was restful, and in raising a monument to them myfeelings of ?lial piety were assuaged. But I could not pretend that the workwas really important. I had had a period of uncreative barrenness, but it hadended, and it was time to turn to something less remote.My next piece of work was Power, a new social analysis. In this book Imaintained that a sphere of freedom is still desirable even in a socialist state,but this sphere has to be de?ned afresh and not in liberal terms. This doctrineI still hold. The thesis of this book seems to me important, and I hoped thatit would attract more attention than it has done. It was intended as a refuta-tion both of Marx and of the classical economists, not on a point of detail, buton the fundamental assumptions that they shared. I argued that power, ratherthan wealth, should be the basic concept in social theory, and that socialjustice should consist in equalisation of power to the greatest practicabledegree. It followed that State ownership of land and capital was no advanceunless the State was democratic, and even then only if methods were devisedfor curbing the power of o?cials. A part of my thesis was taken up andpopularised in Burnham’s Managerial Revolution, but otherwise the book fellrather ?at. I still hold, however, that what it has to say is of very greatimportance if the evils of totalitarianism are to be avoided, particularly undera Socialist régime.In 1936, I married Peter Spence and my youngest child, Conrad, was bornin 1937. This was a great happiness. A few months after his birth, I at lastsucceeded in selling Telegraph House. For years I had had no o?ers, butsuddenly I had two: one from a Polish Prince, the other from an Englishbusiness man. In twenty-four hours, owing to their competition, I succeededin increasing the price they o?ered by ￡1000. At last the business man won,and I was rid of the incubus, which had been threatening me with ruin sinceI had to spend capital so long as it was not disposed of, and very little capitalremained.Although, for ?nancial reasons, I had to be glad to be rid of TelegraphHouse, the parting was painful. I loved the downs and the woods and mythe autobiography of bertrand russell 412tower room with its views in all four directions. I had known the placefor forty years or more, and had watched it grow in my brother’s day. Itrepresented continuity, of which, apart from work, my life has had far lessthan I could have wished. When I sold it, I could say, like the apothecary, ‘mypoverty but not my will consents’. For a long time after this I did not have a?xed abode, and thought it not likely that I should ever have one. I regrettedthis profoundly.After I had ?nished Power, I found my thoughts turning again to theoreticalphilosophy. During my time in prison in 1918, I had become interested inthe problems connected with meaning, which in earlier days I had com-pletely ignored. I wrote something on these problems in The Analysis of Mindand in various articles written at about the same time. But there was a greatdeal more to say. The logical positivists, with whose general outlook I had alarge measure of agreement, seemed to me on some points to be falling intoerrors which would lead away from empiricism into a new scholasticism.They seemed inclined to treat the realm of language as if it were self-subsistent, and not in need of any relation to non-linguistic occurrences.Being invited to give a course of lectures at Oxford, I chose as my subject‘Words and Facts’. The lectures were the ?rst draft of the book published in1940 under the title An Inquiry into Meaning and Truth.We bought a house at Kidlington, near Oxford, and lived there for about ayear, but only one Oxford lady called. We were not respectable. We had later asimilar experience in Cambridge. In this respect I have found these ancient