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said, to be arrogant and unfriendly at our last meeting. I was extremely sorryfor this since my feelings towards him were, as they had always been, mostfriendly and I felt anything but arrogant towards him. But the last meeting towhich he alluded had been a somewhat trying occasion to me. His wife Maryhad asked me to lunch with them and I had gone. At the time of my separ-ation from her sister Alys, she had written me a cutting letter saying that theydid not wish to have anything further to do with me. Her invitation to lunchcame many years later. I was glad to accept as I had never wished any break inour friendship, but I felt a little awkward and shy as I could not forget entirelyher previous letter. Bernard Berenson had evidently never known of the letteror had forgotten it. I myself had felt that the luncheon had healed the breachand had been glad when he begged me to come to I Tatti again as I shouldhave liked to do.Meantime, as I assessed the response that my broadcast had achieved andconsidered what should be done next, I had realised that the point that Imust concentrate upon was the need of co-operation among nations. It hadoccurred to me that it might be possible to formulate a statement that anumber of very well-known and respected scientists of both capitalist andcommunist ideologies would be willing to sign calling for further jointaction. Before taking any measures, however, I had written to Einstein to learnwhat he thought of such a plan. He had replied with enthusiasm, but had saidthe autobiography of bertrand russell 546that, because he was not well and could hardly keep up with present com-mitments, he himself could do nothing to help beyond sending me thenames of various scientists who, he thought, would be sympathetic. He hadbegged me, nevertheless, to carry out my idea and to formulate the statementmyself. This I had done, basing the statement upon my Christmas broadcast,‘Man’s Peril’. I had drawn up a list of scientists of both East and West and hadwritten to them, enclosing the statement, shortly before I went to Rome withthe Parliamentarians. I had, of course, sent the statement to Einstein for hisapproval, but had not yet heard what he thought of it and whether he wouldbe willing to sign it. As we ?ew from Rome to Paris, where the WorldGovernment Association were to hold further meetings, the pilot announcedthe news of Einstein’s death. I felt shattered, not only for the obvious reasons,but because I saw my plan falling through without his support. But, on myarrival at my Paris hotel, I found a letter from him agreeing to sign. This wasone of the last acts of his public life.While I was in Paris I had a long discussion about my plan with FrédéricJoliot-Curie. He warmly welcomed the plan and approved of the statementexcept for one phrase: I had written, ‘It is feared that if many bombs are usedthere will be universal death – sudden only for a fortunate minority, but forthe majority a slow torture of disease and disintegration’. He did not like mycalling the minority ‘fortunate’. ‘To die is not fortunate’, he said. Perhaps hewas right. Irony, taken internationally, is tricky. In any case, I agreed to deleteit. For some time after I returned to England, I heard nothing from him. Hewas ill, I learned later. Nor could I induce an answer from various otherimportant scientists. I never did hear from the Chinese scientist to whom Ihad written. I think the letter to him was probably misaddressed. Einstein hadadvised me to enlist the help of Niels Bohr who, he thought, would certainlybe in favour of my plan and my statement. But I could achieve no reply fromhim for many weeks in spite of repeated letters and telegrams. Then camea short letter saying that he wished to have nothing to do with either plan orstatement. The Russian Academicians, still suspicious of the West, also refusedto sign, although they wrote commending the plan with some warmth. Aftersome correspondence, Professor Otto Hahn refused to sign, because, I under-stood, he was working for the forthcoming ‘Mainau Declaration’ of scientists.This declaration was already in preparation, but seemed to me to be some-what emasculated by the fact that it was intended to include among itssignatories only scientists of the West. Fortunately, others who signed theMainau Declaration agreed with me and signed both. My most personaldisappointment was that I could not obtain the signature of Lord Adrian,the President of the Royal Society and Master of my College, Trinity. I knewthat he agreed with the principles in my broadcast, which were those of themanifesto that I hoped he would sign. He had himself spoken publicly inat home and abroad 547similar vein. And I had been pleased when I learned that Trinity wished tohave in its Library a manuscript of ‘Man’s Peril’. But when I discussed mystatement or manifesto with him I thought I understood why he wasreluctant to sign. ‘It is because it is too eloquent, isn’t it?’ I asked. ‘Ye s’, hesaid. Many of the scientists to whom I wrote, however, at once warmly agreedto sign, and one, Linus Pauling, who had heard of the plan only at secondhand, o?ered his signature. I was glad to accept the o?er.When I look back upon this time I do not see how the days and nightsprovided time to get through all that I did. Journeys to Rome and Parisand again to Scotland, family troubles, arrangements to settle in North Walesfor the holidays, letters, discussions, visitors, and speeches. I wrote innumer-able articles. I had frequent interviews and much correspondence with anAmerican, R. C. Marsh, who was collecting and editing various early essays ofmine which appeared the following year under the title Logic and Knowledge. AndI was also preparing my book Portraits from Memory for publication in 1956. InJanuary, 1955, I gave a lecture at the British Academy on J. S. Mill, which Ihad considerable di?culty in composing. I had already spoken so often aboutMill. But the speech had one phrase that I cherish: in speaking about the factthat propositions have a subject and a predicate, I said it had led to ‘threethousand years of important error’. And the speech was acclaimed in a mostgratifying manner. The audience rose, thumped and clapped.June came and still all the replies to my letters to the scientists had not beenreceived. I felt that in any case some concrete plan must be made as to howthe manifesto should be publicised. It seemed to me that it should be given adramatic launching in order to call attention to it, to what it said and to theeminence of those who upheld it. After discarding many plans, I decided toget expert advice. I knew the editor of the Observer slightly and believed him tobe liberal and sympathetic. He proved at that time to be both. He called incolleagues to discuss the matter. They agreed that something more wasneeded than merely publishing the fact that the manifesto had been writtenand signed by a number of eminent scientists of varying ideologies. Theysuggested that a press conference should be held at which I should read thedocument and answer questions about it. They did far more than this. Theyo?ered to arrange and ?nance the conference with the proviso that it notbecome, until later, public knowledge that they had done so. It was decided?nally that the conference should take place on July 9th (1955). A room wasengaged in Caxton Hall a week before. Invitations were sent to the editors ofall the journals and to the representatives of foreign journals as well as to the??? and representatives of foreign radio and ?? in London. This invitationwas merely to a conference at which something important of world-wideinterest was to be published. The response was heartening and the room hadto be changed to the largest in the Hall.the autobiography of bertrand russell 548It was a dreadful week. All day long the telephone rang and the doorbellpealed. Journalists and wireless directors wanted to be told what this impor-tant piece of news was to be. Each hoped, apparently, for a scoop. Threetimes daily someone from the Daily Worker rang to say that their paper hadnot been sent an invitation. Daily, three times, they were told that they hadbeen invited. But they seemed to be so used to being cold-shouldered thatthey could not believe it. After all, though they could not be told this, onepurpose of the manifesto was to encourage co-operation between the com-munist and the non-communist world. The burden of all this ?urry fellupon my wife and my housekeeper. I was not permitted to appear or to speakon the telephone except to members of the family. None of us could leavethe house. I spent the week sitting in a chair in my study trying to read.At intervals, I was told later, I muttered dismally, ‘This is going to be adamp squib’. My memory is that it rained during the entire week and wasvery cold.The worst aspect of the a?air was that not long before this I had received aletter from Joliot-Curie saying that he feared that, after all, he could not signthe manifesto. I could not make out why he had changed. I begged him tocome to London to discuss the matter, but he was too ill. I had been inconstant touch with Dr E. H. S. Burhop in order that the manifesto should notin any way o?end those of communist ideology. It was largely due to hise?orts that the night before the conference was scheduled to take placeMonsieur Biquard came from Paris to discuss with Burhop and myself Joliot-Curie’s objections. Monsieur Biquard has since taken Joliot-Curie’s place inthe World Federation of Scienti?c Workers. They arrived at 11.30 p.m. Some-time after midnight we came to an agreement. The manifesto could not bechanged from the form it had had when Einstein had signed it and, in anycase, it was too late to obtain the agreement of the other signatories to achange. I suggested, therefore, that Joliot-Curie’s objections be added infootnotes where necessary and be included in my reading of the text thefollowing morning. I had hit upon this scheme in dealing with an objectionof one of the Americans. Joliot-Curie’s emissary at last agreed to this andsigned the manifesto for him, as he had been empowered to do if an agree-ment could be reached.Another di?culty that had beset me was the ?nding of a chairman for themeeting who would not only add lustre to the occasion but would beequipped to help me in the technical questions that would surely be asked.For one reason or another everyone whom I approached refused the job. Iconfess that I suspected their refusal to have been the result of pusillanimity.Whoever took part in this manifesto or its launching ran the risk of disap-proval that might, for a time at any rate, injure them or expose them toridicule, which they would probably mind even more. Or perhaps theirat home and abroad 549refusal was the result of their dislike of the intentional dramatic quality ofthe occasion. Finally, I learned that Professor Josef Rotblat was sympathetic.He was, and still is, an eminent physicist at the Medical College ofSt Bartholomew’s Hospital and Executive vice-President of the AtomicScientists’ Association. He bravely and without hesitation agreed to act asChairman and did so when the time came with much skill. From the time ofthat fortunate meeting I have often worked closely with Professor Rotblat andI have come to admire him greatly. He can have few rivals in the courage andintegrity and complete self-abnegation with which he has given up his owncareer (in which, however, he still remains eminent) to devote himself tocombating the nuclear peril as well as other, allied evils. If ever these evils areeradicated and international a?airs are straightened out, his name shouldstand very high indeed among the heroes.Amongst others who encouraged me at this meeting were Alan Wood andMary Wood who, with Kenneth Harris of the Observer, executed a variety ofburdensome and vexatious drudgeries to make the occasion go o? well. Andin the event it did go well. The hall was packed, not only with men, but withrecording and television machines. I read the manifesto and the list of signa-tories and explained how and why it had come into being. I then, withRotblat’s help, replied to questions from the ?oor. The journalistic mind,naturally, was impressed by the dramatic way in which Einstein’s signaturehad arrived. Henceforth, the manifesto was called the Einstein-Russell (or viceversa) manifesto. At the beginning of the meeting a good deal of scepticismand indi?erence and some out and out hostility was shown by the press. Asthe meeting continued, the journalists appeared to become sympathetic andeven approving, with the exception of one American journalist who felta?ronted for his country by something I said in reply to a question. Themeeting ended after two and a half hours with enthusiasm and high hope ofthe outcome of the call to scientists to hold a conference.When it was all over, however, and we had returned to our ?at at Millbankwhere we were spending the weekend, reaction set in. I recalled the horridfact that in making various remarks about the signatories I had said thatProfessor Rotblat came from Liverpool. Although he himself had not seemedto notice the slip, I felt ashamed. The incident swelled to immense propor-tions in my mind. The disgrace of it prevented me from even speaking of it.When we walked to the news hoardings outside of Parliament to see if theevening papers had noted the meeting and found it heralded in bannerheadlines, I still could not feel happy. But worse was to come. I learned that Ihad omitted Professor Max Born’s name from the list of signatories, had,even, said that he had refused to sign. The exact opposite was the truth. Hehad not only signed but had been most warm and helpful. This was a seriousblunder on my part, and one that I have never stopped regretting. By the timethe autobiography of bertrand russell 550that I had learned of my mistake it was too late to rectify the error, though I atonce took, and have since taken, every means that I could think of to set thematter straight. Professor Born himself was magnanimous and has continuedhis friendly correspondence with me. As in the case of most of the othersignatories the attempt and achievement of the manifesto took precedenceover personal feelings.Word continued to pour in of the wide news coverage all over the world ofthe proclamation of the manifesto. Most of it was favourable. My spirits rose.But for the moment I could do nothing more to forward the next step inopposition to nuclear armament. I had to devote the next few weeks to familymatters. During the dreadful week before the proclamation when the tele-phone was not ringing about that subject it was ringing to give me mostdistressing news about my elder son’s illness. I now had to devote all mymind to that and to moving my family for the summer to our new house inNorth Wales. The latter had been painted and refurbished during our absenceunder the kind auspices of Rupert and Elizabeth Crawshay-Williams. Thenecessary new furnishing to augment what we had bought from the estateof the former tenant had been bought in London during ?ve afternoons atthe end of June. So all was more or less ready for us. We went there to preparefor the coming of the three grandchildren as soon as possible. I was gladto escape from London. Most people seem to think of me as an urban indi-vidual, but I have, in fact, spent most of my life in the country and am farhappier there than in any city known to me. But, having settled the childrenwith the nurse who had for some years taken care of them at Richmond, I hadto journey to Paris again for another World Government Conference. It washeld in the Cité Universitaire and the meetings proved interesting. There werevarious parties in connection with it, some o?cial and some less so. Onewas at the Quai d’Orsay. At one, a cocktail party held in the house of thegreat couturière Schiaparelli, I went out into the garden where I was quicklysurrounded by a group of women who thought that women should dosomething special to combat nuclear warfare. They wished me to supporttheir plans. I am entirely in favour of anyone doing what they can to combatnuclear warfare, but I have never been able to understand why the sexesshould not combat it together. In my experience, fathers, quite as much asmothers, are concerned for the welfare of their young. My wife was standingon a balcony above the garden. Suddenly she heard my voice rise inanguished tones: ‘But, you see, I am not a mother!’ Someone was dispatchedat once to rescue me.After this Paris conference at the end of July, we returned to Richmond foranother congress. The Association of Parliamentarians for World Governmenthad planned in June to hold a congress for both Eastern and Western scien-tists and others if they could manage it during the ?rst days of August. They,at home and abroad 551as I did, believed that the time had come for communists and non-communists to work together. I had taken part in their deliberations and wasto speak at the ?rst meeting. Three Russians came from the Moscow Academyas well as other people, particularly scientists, from many parts of the world.The Russians were led by Academician Topchiev of whom I was later to seemuch and whom I grew to respect and greatly like. This was the ?rst timesince the war that any Russian Communists had attended a conference in theWest and we were all exceedingly anxious to have the meetings go well. Inthe main they did so. But there was a short time when, at a committeemeeting towards the end of the second day, the Russians could not come toagreement with their Western colleagues. The organisers telephoned me andasked if I could do anything to soothe matters. Fortunately agreement wasmanaged. And at the ?nal meeting I was able to read the resolutions of theconference as having been reached unanimously. Altogether, the conferenceaugured well for co-operation. I could return to Wales for a few weeks ofreal holiday with the happy feeling that things were at last moving as onewould wish.Naturally, all work did not stop even during the holiday. I had already beenconsidering with Professors Rotblat and Powell how we could implementthe scientists’ manifesto which had called for a conference of scientiststo consider all the matters concerning and allied to the nuclear dangers.Professor Joliot-Curie, who was himself too ill to take active part in our plans,encouraged us at long distance. We were fairly sure by this time of being ableto get together a good group of scientists of both East and West.In the early days of preparing the manifesto, I had hoped that I might besupported in it by the Indian scientists and Government. At the beginning ofNehru’s visit to London in February, 1955, my hope of it soared. Nehruhimself had seemed most sympathetic. I lunched with him and talked withhim at various meetings and receptions. He had been exceedingly friendly.But when I met Dr Bhabha, India’s leading o?cial scientist, towards the endof Nehru’s visit, I received a cold douche. He had profound doubts aboutany such manifesto, let alone any such conference as I had in mind for thefuture. It became evident that I should receive no encouragement fromIndian o?cial scienti?c quarters. After the successful promulgation of themanifesto, however, Nehru’s more friendly attitude prevailed. With theapproval and help of the Indian Government, it was proposed that the ?rstconference between Western and Eastern scientists be held in New Delhi inJanuary, 1957.Throughout the early part of 1956, we perfected, so far as we could, ourplans for the conference. By the middle of the year we had sent o? invitationsover my name to about sixty scientists. But 1956 was a year of bits and piecesfor me, taken up chie?y by broadcasts and articles. An endless and pleasantthe autobiography of bertrand russell 552stream of old friends and new acquaintances came and went. We decided tosell our Richmond house and move permanently to North Wales. We kept,however, as a pied à terre in London, our ?at in Millbank, with its wonderfulview of the river in which I delighted. Later, we were turned out of this ?atfor the modernisation of Millbank. Politically, I took part in numberlessmeetings concerned with a variety of a?airs, some to do with the troublesin Cyprus, some to do with World Government. (The World GovernmentAssociation gave a dinner in my honour in February at the House of Commons.I have never felt sure how many of the people at the dinner knew that it hadbeen announced as a dinner in my honour. At any rate, some of the speechesmight have turned my head happily if only I could have believed them.) I wasespecially concerned with a campaign about the imprisonment of MortonSobell in the United States.At the time of the Rosenbergs’ trial and death (one is tempted to sayassassination) in 1951, I had paid, I am ashamed to say, only cursory atten-tion to what was going on. Now, in 1956, in March, my cousin MargaretLloyd brought Mrs Sobell, Morton Sobell’s mother, to see me. Sobell had beenkidnapped by the United States Government from Mexico to be brought totrial in connection with the Rosenberg case. He had been condemned, on theevidence of a known perjurer, to thirty years’ imprisonment, of which he hadalready served ?ve. His family was trying to obtain support for him, and hismother had come to England for help. Several eminent people in America hadalready taken up cudgels on his behalf, but to no avail. People both here andin the United States appeared to be ignorant of his plight and what had led upto it. I remember talking of the case with a well-known and much admiredFederal Court Judge. He professed complete ignorance of the case of MortonSobell and was profoundly shocked by what I told him of it. But I noted thathe afterwards made no e?ort to get at the facts, much less to do anything toremedy them. The case seemed to me a monstrous one and I agreed to do all Icould to call people’s attention to it. A small society had already been formedin London to do this, and they agreed to help me. I wrote letters to the papersand articles on the matter. One of my letters contained the phrase ‘a posse ofterri?ed perjurers’, which pleased me and annoyed those who did not agreewith me. I was inundated by angry letters from Americans and others deny-ing my charges and asking irately how I could be so bold as to call Americanjustice into question. A few letters came from people, including members ofthe above-mentioned London group, who agreed with me, though no one inEngland, so far as I know, upheld my point of view publicly. I was generallyand often venomously charged with being anti-American, as I often havebeen when I have criticised adversely any Americans or anything American.I do not know why, since I have spent long periods in that country andhave many friends there and have often expressed my admiration of variousat home and abroad 553Americans and American doings. Moreover, I have married two Americans.However – ten years later it had come to be generally agreed that the caseagainst Morton Sobell did not hold water. The Court of Appeals pronouncedpublicly on the case in 1962–63. On reading the judges’ verdict, I under-stood them to say that it was not worth granting Sobell a new trial. Onappealing for advice from Sobell’s defence lawyers on my interpretation ofthe verdict, I was informed: ‘It was terrible, though not quite as crude asyou’d imagined.’ The defence lawyers had argued that ‘Ethel Rosenberg’sconstitutional Fifth-Amendment rights had been violated during the trial,and that this had been fully established in a subsequent Supreme Court deci-sion, known as the “Grunewald” decision. This decision indicated that EthelRosenberg had been entitled to a new trial; and since her innocence wouldhave established her husband’s and Sobell’s, they too were entitled to newtrials . . . The Rosenbergs, alas, were no longer around, but Sobell shouldhave his day in court.’ Although his family continue their long, brave ?ght toobtain freedom for him, Morton Sobell remains in prison.Early in 1947 I had said in the House of Lords that in America ‘any personwho favours the United Nations is labelled as a dangerous “Red”’. I wasalarmed by such uncritical anti-communism, especially as it was adoptedincreasingly by organisations purporting to be liberal. For this reason I feltobliged, early in 1953, to resign from the American Committee for CulturalFreedom. I remained Honorary President of the International Congress forCultural Freedom. Three years later I was sent the proof of a book called Wa sJustice Done? The Rosenberg–Sobell Case by Malcolm Sharp, Professor of Law at theUniversity of Chicago. It made it quite clear to me, and I should have thoughtto anyone, that there had been a miscarriage of justice. I denounced in thepress the hysteria and police-state techniques which had been used againstthe Rosenbergs and Sobell. The response of the American Committee forCultural Freedom seems even more absurd in the light of the evidence whichhas mounted during the intervening years than it seemed at the time. ‘Thereis no evidence whatsoever’, the American Committee pronounced, ‘that theFederal Bureau of Investigation committed atrocities or employed thugs inthe Rosenberg case. There is no support whatever for your charge that Sobell,an innocent man, was the victim of political hysteria. There is no groundwhatever for your contention that either Sobell or the Rosenbergs were con-demned on the word of perjurers, terri?ed or unterri?ed . . . Your remarkson American judicial procedure, the analogy you draw between the tech-nique of the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the policy [sic] methods ofNazi Germany or Stalin’s Russia, constitute a major disservice to the cause offreedom and democracy.’ Having learned that the American branch approvedof cultural freedom in Communist countries but not elsewhere, I resignedfrom the Congress for Cultural Freedom.the autobiography of bertrand russell 554But in the summer of 1956 things seemed to be moving in our direc-tion so far as the proposed conference of scientists was concerned. Then, inOctober, two misfortunes overtook the world: the ?rst was the HungarianRevolt and its suppression;2the second was the Suez a?air. In relation to thelatter I felt shocked, as I said publicly, and sickened by our Government’smachinations, military and other. I welcomed Gaitskell’s speech, dry and latein coming though it was, because it said more or less o?cially a number ofthings that should have been said. But the loss of in?uence in internationala?airs which Great Britain must su?er in consequence of this ill-advised Suezexploit seemed to me well-nigh irreparable. In any case, it was obviouslyimpossible to take the Western participants in the conference by the round-about route then necessary to arrive in India in January 1957. So we had tore-plan our next move.The problem was how the work was to be carried out and where such aconference should be held and, above all, how it could be ?nanced. I felt verysure that the conference should not be bound by the tenets of any establishedbody and that it should be entirely neutral and independent; and the otherplanners thought likewise. But we could ?nd no individual or organisation inEngland willing, if able, to ?nance it and certainly none willing to do so withno strings attached. Some time before, I had received a warm letter of appro-bation for what I was doing from Cyrus Eaton in America. He had o?eredto help with money. Aristotle Onassis, the Greek shipping magnate, had alsoo?ered to help if the conference were to take place at Monte Carlo. CyrusEaton now con?rmed his o?er if the conference were to be held at hisbirthplace, Pugwash in Nova Scotia. He had held other sorts of conferencesthere of a not wholly dissimilar character. We agreed to the condition. Planswent ahead fast under the guidance of Professors Rotblat and Powell. Theywere greatly helped by Dr Burhop and, then and later, by Dr Patricia Lindop,a physicist of St Bartholomew’s Medical College. Her informed and dedi-cated devotion to the causes of peace and co-operation among scientistswas, I found, comparable even to Professor Rotblat’s. She managed herwork, her children and household and the scientists with apparently carefreegrace and tact. And the ?rst conference took place in early July, 1957, atPugwash.I was unable to go to this ?rst conference because of my age and ill health.A large part of my time in 1957 was devoted to various medical tests todetermine what was the trouble with my throat. In February, I had to go intohospital for a short time to ?nd out whether or not I had cancer of the throat.The evening that I went in I had a debate over the ??? with Abbot Butler ofDownside which I much enjoyed, and I think he did also. The incident wento? as pleasantly as such a trying performance could do and it was discovered