BR TO GERALD BRENAN, 21 MAY 1945
BRACERS 58216. ALS(X). Lynda Pranger
Proofread by K. Blackwell

May 21, 1945

Dear Gerald

Thank you very much for your letter about my debate with Haldane.1 I am glad you approved of my efforts, as I was afraid I had been too tame.

I don’t think they will let me talk on politics.2 Now that the Germans are finished, I think it important to be anti-Russian; but if this is to be done effectively, we must be genuinely democratic, and not suggest to the world that the only alternative to Moscow is governments of semi-penitent Fascists. A Labour government will be far more effective than Churchill in this way.

I agree whole-heartedly with all you say about blue-prints etc.

The source of all evil is Sparta as idealized in Plato’s Republic and Plutarch’s Life of Lycurgus. You say “societies are not machines but organisms”. This was true, and still ought to be; but the power to create social machines has grown alarmingly.

I hope we shall see you again soon. Love from both to both.

Yours ever
B.R.

• 1

  about my debate with Haldane B&R C45.08, “Should Scientists Be Public Servants?”. Broadcast on the BBC Home Service, 4 May 1945, and published in The Listener, 10 May (19 in Collected Papers 24).

• 2

  I don’t think they will let me talk on politics. They did, but waited until Russell had approached the topic of democracy philosophically on the BBC Third Programme, 5 January 1947 (B&R C47.02, 25 in Collected Papers 24). Then he was invited to speak for the first time on the atomic bomb during the BBC’s “Atomic Week”. See B&R C47.05, “The Outlook for Mankind” (70a in Collected Papers 24).