BOOKS
Voice from a Cloud
B Y CONSTANT NE FITZGIBBON 'ENGLAND,, a Times leader announced some L,half a dozen years ago 'has always been well served by her octogenarians.' One of the English octogenarians still with us, a man of the highest social origin, a Nobel Prize winner and the wearer of the Order of Merit, is spend- ing his ninth decade in amiable and dignified retirement. Lord Russell, on the other hand, equally fortunate in background and almost as highly honoured, has awaited this advanced age before finally committing himself with his whole heart to the arena of politics. He was over eighty when he decided that his vast erudition, his gigantic prestige among the literate and his for- midable personality should be given, without stint or fear, to the service of England. He then made up his mind that the folly of the poli- ticians was leading England to war, that war must mean the obliteration of his nation, and that he must therefore intervene, personally. We cannot but admire his self-sacrifice, his courage and his vitality. Furthermore, it is right that the hatred which all of us feel for the prospect of nuclear war and of obliteration should be voiced as loudly as possible.
Fact and Fiction* is a collection of occa- sional writings. While some are fragmentary in- tellectual autobiography ('Books that Influenced Me in Youth'), and some are not altogether suc- cessful fantasy and parody, the main interest of the volume lies in those essays which show how his political ideas have lately developed. There is, inevitably, a certain repetition. Apart from substituting 'Stalin's Russia' for Russia tout court whenever he has anything critical to say about the Soviet Union, little editing seems to have been attempted or done. Indeed, his broadcast talks are reprinted from The Listener complete with the sub-heads which that periodi- cal's sub-editor inserts into all copy. This occa- sionally produces a faintly comical note: lbsen's Women—'Brawny and Arrogant.'
Has Man a Future?,t written in July of this year, is, except for its ending, little more than a rearrangement of the content of these political papers to form a somewhat rambling statement of convictions. The two editions, published simul- taneously, seem to be identical in text, though one bears a portrait of the philosopher looking like an extremely angry emu, while the other has an art photo printed in red and black which recalls the striae Commendatore swear- ing vengeance while the flames of hell flicker just out of sight beneath his feet.
What Lord Russell has to tell us—for it is a matter of telling, not of attempting to persuade —in these political writings is at some variance with the general impression which his latest ac- tivities as the figurehead, and perhaps the leader, of the nuclear disarmament movement have made upon his compatriots. He favours
* PACT AND FICTION. By Bertrand Russell. (Allen and Unwin, 18s.) t HAS MAN A Furman By Bertrand Russell. (Allen and Unwin, 10s. 6d., and Penguin, 2s. 6d.) British neutralism on the grounds of expediency, because he believes that a disarmed and neutral Britain is less likely to be attacked by Russia than she is at present He does not advocate 'sub- mission to the Russians' by Britain, nor unilateral disarmament by the United States (at least he didn't in 1960), but maintains that this is not incompatible with his plan for mankind's future. CI see, in my mind's eye, a world of glory and joy, a world where minds expand, where hope remains undimmed, and what is noble is no longer condemned as treachery to this or that paltry aim.') Birth-control in Asia is essential in the long run. But more important, because the run is likely to be short, is nego- tiation leading to a World Government. This not very original theory is produced again and again. How is a World Government to be achieved? Basically, by a change of heart not only in 'the people' but also in 'the politicians,' who must be taught to think as clearly as Lord Russell and the handful of men whom he ad- mires, mostly scientists, already do at Pugwash and elsewhere.
Meanwhile the first step should be to appoint, probably through the United Nations, a Con- ciliation Committee 'consisting of eminent men from East and West and, also, certain eminent neutrals,' which would have the task, first, of reaching agreement among themselves, and, secondly, of convincing their benighted govern- ments that the enmity called the Cold War is based on misapprehensions concerning man- kind's true interests. There is an understandable vagueness as to who these eminent men should be. Obviously not Western or Eastern politicians. Nehru, Dr. Schweitzer, Professor Rotblat, Pro- fessor Niels Bohr and, of course . . . Well, it all sounds pleasantly Utopian and would seem to have little in common with Lord Russell's denunciation of President Kennedy and Mr. Macmillan as worse criminals than Hitler, nor even with the civil disobedience campaign which he increasingly supports. It would be fine if the whole world were to be well served by its octo- genarians. It would be finer still if The Threat were to be lifted. And a democratic World Government—Lord Russell describes himself as a democrat and speaks with benevolence of our system of public administration—would be almost ideal. It is when we come to examine the methods by which he has reached these inspiring conclusions that the latent violence becomes apparent.
The first Earl Russell, better known as Lord John Russell and our hero's grandfather, retained the family motto Che sara sari:. This might appear suitable for the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom who presided over the Irish famine while shiploads of Irish grain were being moved to England. Or he may have been ironical, and have thought that the divine right of the Whig aristocracy to tell others how to behave for their own good was che sara. The present earl, who, it must be remembered, was in his late twenties at the time of the DiamondU Jubilee, has never doubted either his position or his responsibilities. (He has also inherited a distaste for the troublesome Irish, and in one of these books wittily deprecates their fondness for their religion. With the robust good sense of his generation he is equally amused by the Tibetan genocide. Serve them right, he says with a laugh, for not being up to date.) 'It seemed to me a matter of course that one should play some part in the progress of man- kind ' He speaks of 'leading our tortured species into a land of light and joy.' The love of free enquiry and free speculation has nevet been common When it has existed, it has existed only in a tiny minority. .' Being thus well grounded to tell other people how to behave, he became a distinguished mathematician and mingled with the greatest scientific minds of his age. Speaking of scientists, he says: 'Such men in- evitably form a kind of aristocracy, since their skill is rare and must remain rare until by some new method men's congenital aptitudes have been increased.' (That this is not true of all scientists is sadly revealed in another aside; referring to the advice which governments get from their experts, many of whom are presumably scien- tists, he says: 'Government experts . . . for personal reasons, tell lies to the governments that employ them. . . .' Lord Russell, of course, belongs to the better sort, the aristocracy.) This was perhaps convenient, for at the turn of the century it became apparent to persons as perceptive as Lord Russell that the Liberal Party was probably not the answer, and in- herited aristocracy had to yield to intellectual aristocracy. He became involve(' in the honour- able and comparatively gentle Left-wing politics of the Webbs and the ILP. This added that moral aristocracy, or priggishness, which has so often been the evil fairy's gift to those whom the other Left-wing fairies have favoured too much. Rather touchingly, he speaks of 'a com- plete failure of movements of the Left in the West to stand for things that they had formerly valued. It is time to revive the aims that pro- gressive people set before themselves in the days before the Russian Revolution.' In fact, the great pragmatic triumphs of Socialism, in this countrY and in most of the West since 1914, leave him cold. 'The world since 1914 has been one in which civilised ways of life and human feeling have steadily decayed.' This may be true in so far that Holland House is now, unfortunately, a physical and intellectual ruin. In Poplar and Liverpool the decay has been less evident.
So from this high, high point above, the rest of humanity Lord Russell has occasionally brought down the tablets of his godless law wherewith to enlighten us. In the 1930s we must appease Hitler. In the late 1940s a firmer policy, perhaps even a preventive war, would have dealt with Communism once and for all. In the 1960s Britain must break her alliances, because such perfidy may decrease the threat to the people of this island. (Evidence that it would be more likely to increase it is dismissed as war- mongering.) Now it is the Whig, now the moralist, now the mathematician who speaks. 'The powers of this world are, at present, divided into three groups, which we may call A and B and C.' We may indeed, but to what avail? 'No problem is insoluble where there Is good will,' says the moralist. The philosopher might have pointed out to him that problems based on nonsensical data (such as the one about how many angels can dance on the head of a pin) are often insoluble. And the ghost of Lord John might have added that an attempt to reduce
the Communist-controlled nations, the nations of the West and the so-called uncommitted nations to A and B and C is plain nonsense. Ile might even have described it as pure Pugwash.
ln his attempt to keep the mathematical equation going, Lord Russell gives equal weight to American public opinion and to the state- ments of Communist leaders: in a forthcoming !2'nok he speaks of the danger of McCarthyism !n the West as equivalent to the loss of freedom 'o the East : he maintains that Kennedy, like Khrushchev, believes 'that it is possible to achieve anything that anyone desires by means of war.' And so, caught in the web of his own arrogance, his wish to serve and indeed to save humanity becomes ensnared in hatred and con- tempt. At the end of Has Man a Future? his determination to equate America with Russia has led to such a loathing of the United States that we find him accepting every point of the current Communist offensive, from the Rapacki Plan and recognition of Red China to expulsion ?f German troops from Welsh training grounds. iS surprising,' he says, 'that what we felt in 1940 can be so quickly forgotten.' That he, of all people, should be surprised by the shortness of political memory is only slightly More astonishing than that this preacher of Mutual understanding should wish to revive and Perpetuate dead hatreds. But then it is not, pre- sumably, for his genius as a logician that he was chosen as figurehead for the movement to which he. now devotes his energies. And as to what Will happen to that movement, and what good °r evil it will cause, perhaps he has the last .word: che sara sara. They might even strum. It °n their guitars.
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