"I had a long friendly cooperation with Krishna Menon during the last years of the British Raj when he was Secretary and I was President of the India League which consisted of British mainly [sic] advocates of freedom for India. In later years, we were no longer in complete agreement as he was more friendly to Communism than I was."

"I have had a letter from Boyd Orr in the course of which he says that no invitation was sent to him to attend either the Pugwash Conference in Moscow or the recent one in London, both of which he would have liked to attend." Ralph Schoenman has told BR of a recent invitation to Boyd Orr.

"Thank you for your letter of September 6 and for the enclosed proofs. I have no corrections to make in them."

"Chris Farley's article in the current Peace News seems to need supplementing by something calculated to revive hope. I have written the enclosed with that intention and, unless you disapprove of it, I should be grateful if you would take it to Peace News."

"There seems to have been a misunderstanding of the question of Rotblat inviting you to the Moscow and London Pugwash Conferences. I send you part of a letter from him dated September 13...."

"My Nightmares is published by Simon and Schuster ... who will also give you information as to paperbacks."

"Tabb's letter with note 'Does this mean the need for more advertising' > Simon & Schuster".

"Sometime ago we talked about The Theologian's Nightmare for which you, Franciszka, had made some lovely illustrations. Allen and Unwin have no objection to your reprinting it with pictures. It would give me much pleasure if you cared to do so. I should not, of course, want any share in royalties or otherwise and I should be willing to contribute a reasonable sum towards the expenses of publication."

"I did not myself know Adam van Trott at all well, but he was a friend of my former wife who is now called Mrs. Spence.... She knew Adam van Trott fairly well while both were at Oxford. ... The only thing I remember at all vividly about him is a walk to a very stormy Cornish coast during which he expressed admiration for Hegel as to which I disagreed."

"Thank you for sending me your book [On the Prevention of War]. I shall certainly read it and you are no doubt right in thinking that I shall disagree with much of it."

"I acknowledge with gratitude that you have done very well with such of my books as you have published in paperbacks. ... With regard to my other popular books, except such as deal with atomic weapons, I am entirely willing that you should publish any of them you think fit on the terms suggested in your letter."

"Penguins in a short period sold over 13 thousand of Has Man a Future?."

"My book An Essay on the Foundations of Geometry was published by the Cambridge University Press and has long been out of print. I no longer agree with what it says. Introduction to Mathematical Philosophy is published by Allen and Unwin. I have not written any book called Physics and Experience."

[But BR did publish a little book with that title (Cambridge, 1946).]

"Many thanks for sending me your book The New Radicalism, which I hope to read at my earliest leisure."

"I am sorry that the Cuban Crisis has prevented my from answering it sooner. Your letter is very kind and will be most helpful to Sarah in making her plans."

"I hope that we may soon have an opportunity of seeing you again if crises do not keep us too busy."

"I shall not myself be attending the State Opening of Parliament but I have promised to send my robe for this occasion to Lord Attlee and I should be obliged if you would make it ready for that occasion."

"I am entirely willing that you should publish in paperbacks Portraits from Memory and Nightmares and any other of my books that you think suitable."

"I am sorry you are having trouble about the things that I published with Haldeman. After a long search, my wife discovered only the enclosed that had any relevance to the matter."

"I am very sorry that the Daily Mail has behaved so badly and am very much impressed by your firmness. I hope the personal loss to you will not be very great. I wish other people had courage equal to yours."

BR includes a brief blurb for his forthcoming book Science, Ethics and Politics: "Mr. Szent-Gyorgyi's book is altogether admirable and is written with a clarity and simplicity that should give it a wide appeal. I find myself in agreement with everything that he says in this book and I hope it may convince many readers."

"With regard to Dora's conditions, it is hardly true that I 'wished' Harriet to be registered as my child. At the time, I still had hopes that, if I condoned on this occasion, the marriage need not be dissolved. Dora's second illegitimate pregnancy led me to abandon this hope. I think I ought to accept some such neutral statement as you suggest."

"At the beginning of the Sino-Indian Trouble, I was entirely on the side of India, not knowing that the Chinese had a good case. But the Chinese Chargé d'Affaire explained their case to me and since studying the documents given me by him and by the Indian Deputy High Commissioner I have realized that the Chinese case is stronger than I had supposed. The British Press has suppressed it almost completely."

"Could you let me have a thousand pounds on account of royalties? I have spent a lot of money lately, not on riotous living, but on keeping you and me alive."

"My heartfelt thanks to you and your school children for the perfectly delightful puppet that they have sent me.... I have, of course, warm sympathy with the Robert Burns and A. Pushkin Club and I wish it and all your children a happy Christmas and New Year."

"Thank you very much for sending me the two records of Mr. Patchen's selected poems which I look forward to hearing at the earliest available moment...."

"I find that the letters to Kennedy and Khrushchev and the Heads of Neutral States had already been sent with a number of signatures and, therefore, alteration of the text was no longer possible."

BR thanks him for the enclosed copies of The Minority of One. "I admire the journal and think it is doing a very useful work. I am quite willing to be a member of sponsors and to make such a statement as you think would be useful." BR encloses a statement.

"I will do my best to write such a book as you outline. If any point it diverges from your suggestions it will be only for literary reasons and not on any political or controversial reasons." Re Unarmed Victory.

Re the Sino-Indian dispute. "If the whole dispute is submitted to arbitration, the question as to the position of the frontier will become a legal one, and whatever has happened in the fighting hitherto will be irrelevant ... my interest in the matter is in the re-establishment and preservation of peace, and that this seems to me far more important than any of the territorial claims of either side."

"I note that China has suggested one provisional frontier line during negotiation and India has suggested another. Provided it is understood that the line is to be part of the matter to be negotiated, I cannot see that its exact position is important. I have written to Mr. Nehru in this sense, and I should like to see neither India nor China making this or that preliminary line a sine qua non for negotiations."

"I am sorry that in my letter to you of December 5 I omitted to say that I think your project may well be useful and that I entirely approve of it. My only reason for not actively co-operating is that all my time and energy is absorbed in trying to prevent a general nuclear war."

BR answers two questions from the Editor. "1) I do not favour disarmament without inspection, but I think the inspection should be in the hands of neutrals.... 2) I do not understand your second question as to whether we should take Russia's word. I have not seen any suggestion that we should do so. Nor do I know in what connection this question arises." Re Kissinger's criticism of BR on black boxes.

"... I had long interviews in London with your Deputy High Commissioner and, also, with the Chinese Chargé d'Affaires. It was quite impossible for me to know which of them, if either, was giving an accurate account of the matter. The only conclusion to which I was able to come from my talks with them supplemented by all the information that I could get hold of from the documents they each gave me as well as from other sources was that each side had a case and that it should be left to expert impartial examination to decide as to the justice of the rival claims."

"I have been considering your letter of December 17 and the enclosed letter from Mrs. Whitehead and have come to the conclusion that any appeal from me to Khrushchev would certainly be useless and would only cause irritation."

"The principle of abstraction defining property in terms of class membership appeared first in the Principles of Mathematics—e.g. Chapter XIX paragraph 157 page 166 and Chapter 26 paragraph 210 page 219."

BR hopes that Unwin is recovering from his attack of shingles. "I should be grateful if you would tell him that Penguin Books have asked me to do a short book on the Cuban and Sino-Indian crises and my connection with them. I thought this very desirable from a propaganda point of view and have, therefore, agreed."

"Mr. H.E. Madams, who does my income tax business, approached me some months ago with an ingenious scheme for greatly diminishing my income tax and avoiding death duties. I asked him to consult you to make sure that the scheme was legally water tight."

"I am sorry to say that the new book upon which I am engaged is not yet finished and I cannot send a chapter of it for your book. I am therefore sending you instead an article somewhat shorter than you desired, but I hope that you will find it acceptable."

"I have been much distressed by the news of Academician Topchiev for whom I had a sincere respect. We shall miss him sadly."

"With considerable regret I have come to the conclusion that I must resign as President of the National Committee of 100. There are two reasons for this: one is that I have become very completely occupied in a kind of work somewhat different from that upon which the Committee is engaged, though directed to similar ends; the other is that, as most of my time is spent in Wales, I cannot take part in the action of the Committee or in detail its work or the reasons for this or that policy."

"My best thanks for sending me Medical History of Contraception.... I believe the book to be valuable and I hope that it will be widely read."

BR encloses a letter from Stanley Unwin's secretary. BR would be willing to agree with whatever Pevsner wishes, but prefers to please Unwin if possible, and requests that he write to Unwin.

"I am prepared to give the MS by a deed as an outright gift to Thomas Kinsey...."

"I do not know of any mention of Shelley by my grandfather Lord John Russell and I doubt whether he took any interest in him. I cannot remember which of Shelley's works had most influence on me. I still admire Shelley, but his political ideas have no relevance to the present age."

"I am very sorry for the muddle about Haldeman-Julius, the more so as I cannot remember anything about it.... If the matter can be adjusted by payments to Hald Julius or someone else, I should be willing to make such payments if they were moderate.... I find it hard to believe that I didn't obtain his permission for republication."

BR has been told that Churchill has forgotten WWII!

"I enclose herewith the agreement duly signed. The only point that arises, so far as I am concerned, is as to the index. I do not know whether you will think that such a short book requires an index, but, if you do, could you find somebody to make it and I will pay him whatever is appropriate."

"Your proposal is entirely satisfactory to me if it is to Penguin Books. May I leave it to you to get in touch with Stanley Unwin."

"In particular I want to be assured that I shall not be liable for income tax or my executors for Estate duty in respect of the sum hereby given to Mr. Kinsey. As you will see from the enclosures Aldus Books Limited advise me to obtain the opinion of my lawyer."

See record 127974.

"Following your advice I am sending the enclosures to my solicitor for his opinion. I will let you know as soon as I hear from him."

"I am honoured to think that my photograph adorns the mantelpiece of H.M.'s Representative in Ethiopia. All that you say about Ethiopia is very interesting. I understand that there are Ethiopian Mss. of ancient Christian works which throw light on the history of the early Church."

BR encloses a statement for Mario Rossi's book The Third World which he has read with "much interest".

"Dear Kevin". (There is no further text.)

"I have been in contact with Mr. Phizo and I have been impressed by the earnestness of his desire to achieve a peaceful settlement of the Naga question—by the importance of putting an end to undesirable features of the fighting in Nagaland. I find it hard to understand the difficulty of coming to an agreement which would put an end to the very painful occurrences incidental to the present policy of India."

"I shall be grateful if you can let me have another £1000 on account of royalties. I have spent a lot of money, not on riotous living, but on the Cuban and the Himalayan crisis." BR's telephone bill for the last quarter was well over £400.

"I am troubled about the delay in the publication date of Unarmed Victory. The book is topical and every day of delay in publication diminishes its usefulness and the interest it may arouse."

Re the article by Paul Johnson called "Labour and the Intellectuals" in their February 22nd issue. "In the course of this article, he makes statements which are completely untrue as to the attitude of the movement to which I belong in the Cuba Crisis. ... Apparently Mr. Johnson considers that our plea to Khrushchev was 'hysterical' and that a nuclear war would have been preferable."

BR thanks him for the proofs <of his messages> and has not found any correction necessary.

"I send you herewith all the Frege letters I have been able to find. I think they are nearly all that I have received. I shall be grateful if you will send them back when you have made copies of them."

"Miss Camilla Gray has written a big book on modern Russian art both before and after the Revolution. ... it seems to me a contribution to the endeavour to make co-existence between East and West possible. ... For my part, I have no doubt whatever that it is in the interests of the USSR, and more particularly of the world policies of which you are the protagonist, to grant Miss Gray the necessary visa and permit her to live in Russia as the wife of Mr. Prokofiev."

BR encloses a copy of his letter to Khrushchev, asking if she approves of it and if there is anything she wishes altered to ring him up about it as it will need to be sent soon.

"I have sent Miss Gray a draft letter to Khrushchev which I am quite willing to send to him if she approves."

"Mr. Paul Johnson's note in reply to my letter published in your issue of March 1 calls for a few words of reply." Re Khrushchev, nuclear weapons, Cuba, unilateralists, and demonstrations by the Committee of 100 and the CND.

Reply to Frood.

"I have been bewildered by the reaction to my activities in the Cuban crisis. I asked Khrushchev to avoid a clash with the American blocading ships and he did so. I asked Khrushchev and Castro to remove nuclear installations in Cuba and they did so. Why these actions should be labelled 'hysterical anti-Americanism' I am at a loss to understand." Notes on verso are a long list of Cuban Missile topics in a pre-publication pagination of Unarmed Victory.

Re John Strachey's review of Herman Kahn's Thinking about the Unthinkable. "According to Mr. Strachey, Herman Kahn advances three theses with which Mr. Strachey is in agreement: 1) There probably will be a thermo-nuclear war; 2) It will not be the end of civilization 3) After it, but not before, a world government will be created which will prevent further thermo-nuclear war." BR is "compelled" to agree to the first of his theses but the other two strike him as absurd. 

"I appreciate your difficulties, but I cannot help feeling that Pauling has been badly treated."

"I send you herewith an article for Playboy which I hope you will find suitable. I took the 'conflict of ideologies' from the subjects that you suggested." The interview was fine.

BR thanks him for the three papers he sent. "I loved your paper about psycho-metabolism, explaining why peacocks dance and women use lipstick, both of which had hitherto been mysteries to me. ... You touch occasionally on the mind-body problem as to which I have very definite views. ... You might find it worth your while to read a short essay of mine called 'Mind and Matter' in Portraits from Memory. ... I am entirely with you as to what Eugenics could achieve, but I disagree as to what it would achieve."

"I enclose herewith the tax Reserve Certificate for £2000. My balance at the moment is not sufficient to cover the additional sum due, but I can raise the money within, at most, a week."

"It has been your practice to send me a cheque for half-yearly royalties in February. I have not as yet received it this year and, as the British Income Tax Authorities are demanding more than my current account will bear, I should be very grateful if you would let me have the usual cheque, or at least a considerable part of it...."

BR thanks Aomi for the summary of his work on BR's philosophy. "Most commentators on my philosophy misunderstand it on some part or parts and attribute to me views which I do not hold, but, in the summary that you have sent me, I have found no misunderstanding whatever."

"I apologize for my mistake in thinking that the royalty cheque from you, which I usually receive in February, had not been paid. My only excuse is that at the time when I received it (December) I was so overwhelmed by work about the Cuban and Himalayan crises that I failed to keep my accounts with my usual care."

"I enclose herewith a cheque for £453.3.5 for the outstanding portion of my income tax."

"Thank you for your letter and the six copies of Unarmed Victory which reached me today. I have signed the seventh copy, as you requested, for Sir Allen Lane and enclose it herewith.... I should be grateful if you would send a copy to Khrushchev and two copies to the Cuban Embassy, one for the Cuban Ambassador and the other for Castro...." BR agrees to April 5 as the publication date.

"I have continued to remember with gratitude your kindness to me in 1940. With regard to your paper on 'Footholds', I am, as you might expect, in complete agreement with your objects, but I feel some doubt as to the possibility of success along the lines you suggest unless supplemented by more popular and less scientific means of approval."

"I am grateful to you for explaining about Dost Mohammad and I enjoyed getting a letter from his great grandson so that at last the mere name is converted into flesh and blood. I was a boy of six when the book in question puzzled me. I am afraid the record of the British in regard to Afghanistan is not very creditable." Edith wrote "To be continued" at the end of the letter.

BR has read his paper on mathematical logic which has given him "much new information." "It is fifty years since I worked seriously at mathematical logic and almost the only work that I have read since that date is Gödel's. I realized, of course, that Gödel's work is of fundamental importance, but I was puzzled by it. It made me glad that I was no longer working at mathematical logic. If a given set of axioms leads to a contradiction, it is clear that at least one of the axioms must be false. Does this apply to school-boys' arithmetic, and, if so, can we believe anything that we were taught in youth?"

"I should like to make a few general remarks about my state of mind while Whitehead and I were doing the Principia. What I was attempting to prove was, not the truth of the propositions demonstrated, but their deducibility from the axioms. And, apart from proofs, what struck me as important was the definitions."

"More generally, Aristotelian logic is almost exclusively concerned with propositional functions having only one variable. The philosophies of Spinoza, Leibniz and Hegel are entirely dependent on this limitation."

"If you can spare the time,  I should like to know, roughly, how, in your opinion, ordinary mathematics—or, indeed, any deductive system—is affected by Gödel's work."

Re the dispute between Linus Pauling and Bentley Glass which arose from an article by Glass titled "Scientists in Politics" in their issue of May 1962. "I should have thought it evident that in any controversy between experts any accusation of error should be backed up by specific evidence and, further, that it should be made clear whether the accusation is only one of error ... or is one impugning scientific rectitude. This was certainly not made clear in Prof. Glass's original criticism of Dr. Pauling."

"As you know ... I agreed to write to Prof. Glass and to hold up any letter from me to the Bulletin until I had heard from Prof. Glass. I received a letter from him this morning, but it did not meet the points which seemed to me important and I am therefore sending the enclosed letter to the Bulletin. As you will see I have tried ... to put my points as inoffensively as possible."

"I do not find anything in your letter to change my opinion that you ought to make public the specific inaccuracies of which you believe Dr. Pauling to be guilty. I should have thought this a general principle. One would not, for instance, accuse a man of being a thief if one were unable or unwilling to give a specific instance. I feel so strongly that scientific controversy can only be fruitful if it is documented by evidence that I am sending a letter to the Bulletin."

"I received this morning a private letter from Prof. Glass which I do not find at all satisfactory. I am therefore sending a fresh letter to the Bulletin...."

"I have today received a private letter from Professor Glass which does not satisfy me. I must therefore ask you to publish the enclosed letter in the Bulletin in place of the letter which I previously asked you to publish."

Letter is marked "Private". "I am sorry to ask you to publish so long a letter, but the accusations in your editorial of April 8 cannot be answered effectively except at some length. As your attack was so vehement and upon me personally, I hope that you will consent to publish the enclosed reply <B&R C63.35>." BR encloses the reply with emendations in ink.

"You will find an account of my life-long friendship with Sanger on page 64 of my Portraits from Memory. Are you the daughter of the Makower who was my contemporary at Cambridge when we were undergrads? He was a man for whom I had a considerable affection and I particularly liked his devotion to music, but I lost sight of him when we both left Cambridge."

"You are quite right that my neutral monism is not 'pure'. I think that mental events only occur where there is a brain, or at least some kind of nervous system. My chief point, to which all other philosophers object, is that mental events have a location in space, in fact in the brain in the case of all higher animals, and, further, that they are constituents of the brain as well as of the mind." BR refers him to Human Knowledge, Part III.

"The main difference between sight and hearing, on the one hand, and the remaining senses on the other, is that the source of visual and auditory sensations is outside the body of the percipient, whereas touch, for instance, has its causal origin on the surface of the body of the percipient while such things as headache and stomachache have their causal origin inside the body. But all sensations, alike, are in the head. They differ only as to the physical location of their causes."

"Tell Penguin" concerning a footnote in Unarmed Victory on page 10, continued from page 9. See records 128018 and 128019.

"Tell Allen and Unwin" concerning a footnote in Unarmed Victory on page 12. See records 128018 and 128019.

"Professor Rotblat has brought to my attention what he informs me is an error in a footnote to my Unarmed Victory. He informs me that, at the time of the Cuban crisis, 'the response from the American scientists was as good as that from the Russians'. Apparently, the mistake arose from confusion with another occasion concerned with test ban negotiations. I regret that this confusion occurred."

"Professor Rotblat tells me that there is an error in the footnote on (page 9-10 <Penguin> and page 12 <Allen & Unwin>) and I shall be very grateful if there is a reprint, the following changes should be made. I am writing to the Times to correct the error."

"I am very sorry that, as you inform me, there is an error in a footnote (pp 9-10) to my Unarmed Victory. I am writing about this to the Times and to Penguin and Allen and Unwin. I enclose copies of these letters."

"It has been drawn to my attention that, on page 209 of Marriage and Morals, I say 'It seems on the whole fair to regard negroes as on the average inferior to white men.' I wish in any future reprint to substitute for the words 'It seems on the whole fair' the words 'There is no sound reason'."

"I do not know the address of Bantam books and I shall be grateful if you will forward to them the enclosed letter and find out on my behalf what they are willing to do to set the matter right."

"In Chapter 18 of Marriage and Morals which you are reprinting there is a statement 'It seems on the whole fair to regard negroes as on the average inferior to white men.' I have for a very long time come to think this statement erroneous and I very much regret that by some mistake the necessary correction was not conveyed to you. ... A very slight change of words would suffice—e.g. the substitution of 'There is no sound reason' for 'It seems on the whole fair'...."

"You bring to my notice that I have given various different definitions of 'philosophy'. I do not think any exact definition is possible. Broadly speaking, I should say that, apart from logic and ethics, philosophy consists of speculation on questions of great generality concerning which exact knowledge does not as yet exist, but I do not think that the definition of the word is a matter of much importance." On insincerity and solipsism.

"The view of physical objects which I now adhere to is, I think, best explained in Human Knowledge. I think that what occurs in any small region of physical space is a complex of spatially overlapping occurrences. In physics this complex can be treated as a single 'thing'—namely a piece of matter—but in dealing with perception a different way of dealing with the complex is necessary. From any given region of physical space causal lines radiate having a certain degree of structural similarity with some constituent of the complex occurring in that place. Many such causal lines meet at any region in physical space. If such a region is a brain, they constitute the complex of what that brain has 'perceived'. This view differs in some respects from that put forward in Our Knowledge of the External World."

"I have some letters from your uncle <Elie Halévy> which I enclose herewith. You are welcome to publish whatever you wish of them." BR much admired her uncle.

BR thanks him for returning the Strachey letters. "If I find any further correspondence that would be of interest to you, I will remember you."

"Cannot accept your suggested changers in letter of April 8 but in lines ten and eleven of third paragraph in place of 'refused to publish details' substitute 'failed' and in next line 'failure'."

"In reply to the letter which you published in your issue of April 21 quoting a statement from my Marriage and Morals I should like to say that subsequent research has led me to consider this unfavourable statement concerning negro ability unfounded and I regret having made it. I have made efforts to have it corrected in reprints of this book."

The word "unfavourable" was added in BR's hand.