BRACERS Record Detail for 132763
To access the original letter, email the Ready Division.
This public letter is addressed "To all, in whatever country, who are still capable of sane thinking or humane feeling".
Typed and signed carbon copies in the file alter the wording of the recipient from "humane" to "human". There is also a typed mimeograph headed "Letter from Bertrand Russell on Committal to Brixton Prison: 12.9.61", with more frequent paragraphing. The dating comes from the mimeo.
As a leaflet the letter was published on 13 Sept. 1961 and quoted in full and almost correctly in The Times, 14 Sept. 1961, p. 6 (B&R A119).
Letter 105
BR TO ALL, IN WHATEVER COUNTRY 12 SEPT. 1961
BRACERS 132763. AL. McMaster. Leaflet (B&R A119); The Times, 14 Sept. 1961
Proofread by K. Blackwell
To all, in whatever country, who are still capable of sane thinking or humane feeling.
Friends,
Along with valued colleagues I am to be silenced for a time — perhaps for ever, for who can tell how soon the great massacre will take place?
The populations of East and West, misled by stubborn governments in search of prestige and by corrupt official experts bent on retaining their posts, tamely acquiesce in policies which are almost certain to end in nuclear war. There are supposed to be two sides, each professing to stand for a great cause. This is a delusion. Kennedy and Khrushchev, Adenauer and De Gaulle, Macmillan and Gaitskell, are pursuing a common aim, the ending of human life. You, your families, your friends, and your countries are to be exterminated, by the common decision of a few brutal but powerful men. To please these men, all the private affections, all the pubic hopes, all that has been achieved in art and knowledge and thought, and all that might be achieved hereafter, is to be wiped out for ever. Our ruined lifeless planet will continue for countless ages to circle aimlessly round the sun, unredeemed by the joys and loves, the occasional wisdom, and the power to create beauty, which have given value to human life.
It is for seeking to prevent this that we are in prison.
