Russell Needed to Write

russell: the Journal of Bertrand Russell Studies n.s. 36 (summer 2016): 92–4 The Bertrand Russell Research Centre, McMaster U. issn 0036–01631; online 1913–8032 c:\users\ken\documents\type3601\red\rj 3601 077 red.docx 2016-04-01 10:08 oeviews RUSSELL NEEDED TO WRITE Peter Stone Political Science / Trinity College Dublin 2, Ireland pstone@tcd.ie Nicholas Griffin, ed. A Pacifist atWar: Letters andWritings of Bertrand Russell, 1914–1918. Nottingham: Spokesman, 2014. Pp. 218. isbn: 978 0 85124 837 0.£9.99 (pb). f there was one thing that Bertrand Russell knew, it was how to write letters. Over the course of his long life, he produced tens of thousands of letters. Many of those are lost forever, but a huge number of them have survived. These letters make good reading, at least for Russell scholars, and so it is not surprising that there are many anthologies of these letters out there. These include the two-volume Selected Letters, edited by Nicholas Griffin (1992– 2001), which covers the whole of Russell’s life and thought, as well as more focused collections, such as Dear Russell—Dear Jourdain, edited by Ivor Grattan -Guinness (1977), and Russell’s Correspondance  avec Louis Couturat (1897–1913), edited by A.-F. Schmid (2 vols., 2001).There is even a collection of Russell’s correspondence with the press—Yours Faithfully, Bertrand Russell, ably edited by Ray Perkins, Jr. (2001)—and one of his correspondence with the general public—Dear Bertrand Russell, edited by Barry Feinberg and Ronald Kasrils (1969). Indeed, at this point there are so many anthologies of Russell correspondence that whenever a new one appears, even the hardcore Russellian must ask, why another one? I found myself asking this question while reading A Pacifist atWar, the latest anthology of Russell letters.This volume (also edited by Nicholas Griffin) collects highlights from Russell’s correspondence in the period 1914–18. I enjoyed reading the collection immensely, and yet the question whether the collection was needed nagged at my mind the entire time. To be sure, the volume contains no surprises in terms of content. All of the letters it contains were first published in Volume 2 of Griffin’s Selected Letters. In re-editing the collection for publication here, Griffin took the opportunity to correct some small errors and supply additional information about the letters (p. 4). He also provides a very well written and readable introduction, f= Reviews 93 c:\users\ken\documents\type3601\red\rj 3601 077 red.docx 2016-04-01 10:08 marred only by a rather abrupt ending (p. 12). And he appends to the letters a half-dozen short anti-war pieces by Russell, including his appeal toWoodrow Wilson and the article that earned him a six-month prison sentence. (While these articles form a separate section of the book, the section is effectively an appendix to the letters.) Griffin’s excellent introduction is badly needed. The letters are certainly not self-explanatory.They require a lot of context to appreciate properly. Grif- fin supplies much of the context, through both the introduction and the extensive explanatory notes embedded in the text (notes that sometimes run longer than the letters they explain).This makes the letters much better reading ; still, one frequently gets the feeling that something is missing. Perhaps this is unavoidable given the absence of letters from Russell’s correspondents. Moreover, there are gaps with respect even to Russell’s own letters.These gaps are not Griffin’s fault; there are many letters that a Russell scholar would love to read but that are almost certainly lost and gone forever.This is particularly true of Russell’s letters to D. H. Lawrence during their brief and disastrous political collaboration; not a single one of these letters survives (p. 45 n.1). As the book’s title implies, the most important topic covered by the letters is Russell’s crusade againstWorldWar i. But the letters do not focus upon this topic, nor indeed upon any topic; they simply chronicle Russell’s life during the period in which World War i takes place. Obviously, such a chronicle will wind up spending much time...

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