An Open Letter to Some Would-be Friends of the Conscientious Objector

Abstract

~w Texts AN OPEN LETTER TO SOME WOULD-BE FRIENDS OF THE CONSCIENTIOUS OBJECTOR BERTRAND RUSSELL EDITED BY JO VELLACOTT Simone de Beauvoir Institute I Concordia University Montreal, PQ, Canada H3G IM8 jo.vellacott@sympatico.ca (Occasionally new writings by Bertrand Russell come to light too late to be included in their proper place in The Collected Papers of Bertrand Russell. Such was the case with his memorandum circulated to the governors of Newnham College in 19°9, discovered after the publication of Papers 12, and the case with a manuscript in which he answered a request of a Stockholm newspaper, discovered after the publication of Papers 13.I The discovery below would also have gone into Papers 13. Such discoveries are facilitated by the Collected Papers and its Bibliography, and the Russell Editorial Project welcomes them for the catch-up volume planned at the end.-Ed.] PREFATORY NOTE I am writing a biography of Catherine Marshall, who worked closely with Russell in the No-Conscription Fellowship ("NCF") during the First World War, and am currently reworking the documentation I used for Bertrand Russell and the Pacifists in the First World \%r (1980), and other material collected since. Because my many photocopies are filed in chronological order, the unsigned but dated "Open Letter" came to rest next to a postcard from Russell to Clifford Allen (postmarked "JUN 27", and also able to be dated by context); Russell's postscript reads in part, "At C.E.M's [Catherine I The former. edited by Sheila Turcon. was published in "Russell ac Newnham: an Unpublished Paper on Scaff Remuneration". Rusu'~ n.s. 7 (1987): 141-6. The laccer was reprinted in the original English under the title "The Reconstruction of Intellectual Internationalism after the War", Rusu'~ n.s. 18 (1998): 141-3. and edited by K. Blackwell. russell: che Journal of Bertrand Russell Scudies McMascer Universiey Press n.S. 19 (wimer 1999-2000): 175-82 ISSN 0036-01631 176 BERTRAND RUSSELL Marshall's] request I have just drafted an open letter to our friends." I had reason to believe that Russell's authorship had not previously been established , so sent an account of my finding to the Russell Archives, where Kenneth Blackwell and Carl Spadoni agreed that the evidence is now ample. Both the content, including the repetition of illustrations Russell used elsewhere , and style are Russellian.2 Particularly because of the last sentence, Blackwell believes that the open letter was directed towards a audience comprised chiefly of members of the Society of Friends. INTRODUCTION Russell was furiously busy in June 1916 with his work for the No-Conscription Fellowship, where he and Clifford Allen were in effect serving an apprenticeship to Catherine Marshall in the art of political agitation. The NCF embodied a remarkable combination of socialist and religious objectors, and although the different roots would lead to a great deal of controversy within the organization, respect for each other's conscience on the whole remained firm. Russell's personal contribution throughout included the writing of short articles as required, a skill which he now developed for the first time and never lost. So profligate was he with his pen that this article makes a total of four written between 23 and 29 June 1916 which seem to have gone to waste, available if needed but, to the best of our knowledge, never published until three appeared in Volume 13 of his Collected Papers3 and the fourth only now. Not surprisingly, the quality varies. At just this time, too, Russell was dealing with the aftermath of his Mansion House trial, considering whether to challenge the Foreign Office's decision to deny him a passport to go to the USA, and preparing to leave on an extended speaking tour in Wales-and incidentally was learning what it meant to work for a voluntary organization which lacked the resources to relieve him of all the details of planning. The Military Service Act had been passed in January 1916, and its provisions extended in May. Under them, all men of military age were deemed to have enlisted and were called to the army, unless they obtained some form of exemption through an appeal to...