BRACERS Record Detail for 2132
To access the original letter, email the Ready Division.
Australian Lecture Tour (1950)
BR demands an apology from the Roman Catholic Archbishop of Melbourne for the untrue statement that BR was barred from entering the U.S. BR's address is The Esplanade Hotel, Perth. (Evidently it was Frank Russell who was barred — see Alys Russell to Bernard Berenson, 1950.)
BR TO DANIEL MANNIX, [11 AUG. 1950]
BRACERS 2132. TEL(C). McMaster. B&R C50.31a
Edited by A.G. Bone. Reviewed by S. Turcon
ARCHBISHOP MANNIX3
ST. PATRICK’S CATHEDRAL,
GISBORNE STREET,
EAST MELBOURNE
I DEMAND THAT YOU MAKE AN IMMEDIATE PUBLIC APOLOGY FOR UNTRUE STATEMENT THAT UNITED STATES GOVERNMENT REFUSED ME PERMISSION TO ENTER THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA4
BERTRAND RUSSELL
- 1
[document] The telegram was edited from the Australian Postmaster-General’s Department form used by the sending office. The text is reprinted as 12b in Collected Papers 26.
- 2
[date] Since no date-received stamp is present, the telegram has been dated from the published reports of Russell’s demand for redress from Archbishop Mannix.
- 3
[recipient] The long and controversial episcopacy of Dr. Daniel Mannix (1864–1963), Catholic Archbishop of Melbourne, lasted from 1917 until his death 46 years later aged 99. During the First World War he was pilloried for disparaging a conflict into which he believed Australia had been dragged and vigorously (and successfully) opposed the introduction of conscription in national referenda of 1916 and 1917. The Irish-born Mannix further antagonized Australia’s Anglican establishment (and the British government) with his ardent support for Ireland’s independence. But his later identification of communism as the principal threat to the Church brought Mannix into Australia’s political mainstream and close contact with Catholic lay labour organizations. Indeed, he applauded Russell’s anti-communism, even while taking him to task for failing “to realize that communism was the logical outcome of the atheism he was prepared to profess”. Russell dismissed this statement as “utterly ridiculous” in the same newspaper report that featured the Archbishop’s criticisms and misrepresentations of him (12a in Papers 26).
- 4
REFUSED ME PERMISSION TO ENTER THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA Perhaps the Archbishop was confusing BR with his brother. As Alys Russell suggested to her brother-in-law, Bernard Berenson, Frank Russell had been denied admission “for having been a bigamist and in prison” (2 Nov. 1950, BRACERS 124381). In the widely-published but inaccurate remarks at which this telegram took umbrage, Mannix also lamented that BR had been “treated differently” by Australian immigration authorities (see The News, Adelaide, 9 Aug. 1950, p. 2).
