BR TO WILBUR BURTON, 28 APR. 1952
BRACERS 11790. ALD. McMaster. Russell 15 (1995): 43–4
Edited by K. Blackwell

Dear Mr. Burton,1

Your letter of April 8 has only just reached me owing to my having been abroad. I remember perfectly meeting you at Freda Utley’s,2 and I remember disagreeing with you probably more vigorously than we should disagree now. I have read your letter carefully, some of it twice over. I have found it very interesting and there is a good deal in it with which I am in agreement. I am glad to know all that you tell me about Chamberlin.3 I will not argue with you about the second World War4 as it would require a volume. I should, however, like to say in regard to what I am supposed to have said in 19475 about an atomic attack on Russia that I did not say what I was reported to have said. Only one reporter was present and he was a communist.6 He chose to mis-report me deliberately and, although I did everything possible to correct the consequent misapprehension, I could not do so in left wing circles because everybody in those circles derived such pleasure from thinking ill of me. Your isolationism—for, though you disclaim isolationism, your view that America should only bother with the Western hemisphere is isolationist, though you may not like to have it so described—seems to me technically impossible in this age. I do not see how it can be right for each of a group of nations to defend its own territory fruitlessly, but wrong for them all to defend their total territory victoriously, and that is what is logically implied in isolationism.

I will not deny that in 1940–42 I was in some degree affected by war hysteria.7 You will find my present views in my last book, New Hopes for a Changing World. I can assure you that I am giving weight to the things that you say in your letter and that several of your points have struck me as important.

Yours sincerely

• 1

  Mr. Burton Wilbur Burton, of Winchester, Indiana. He was a journalist, libertarian, and a conscientious objector in World War II. His letter is at RA1 710.047925, and a typed copy of BR’s reply is at RA2 340.184043. BR’s response to Burton’s reply to this letter is on p. 47. For more on Burton, see Freda Utley’s Odyssey of a Liberal (Washington: Washington National P., 1970). Burton’s letter is a sustained tirade against internationalism in American politics.

• 2

  Freda Utley’s Utley was an ex-Communist and an old friend of BR’s, who admired her Japans Feet of Clay and Lost Illusion. He blurbed and reviewed the former (B&R Gg36.01 and C36.30) and introduced the latter (B&R B93).

• 3

  Chamberlin William Henry Chamberlin (1897–1969), conservative American author and journalist. BR was recently in public correspondence with him over BR’s article “Democracy and the Teachers” (B&R C51.38); see also “Bertrand Russell and the U.S.A” (C52.01, C52.04).

• 4

  I will not argue with you about the second World War BR desired US intervention, which Burton regarded as “the Roosevelt War”.

• 5

  what I am supposed to have said in 1947 Burton wrote in his letter: “You did—unless I read a misquotation from you—advocate in 1947 an immediate atomic bomb attack on Russia if she would not bow to an Anglo-American ultimatum to join in a one-world government....”

• 6

  Only one reporter was present and he was a communist. BR has conflated the misreporting by J.P. Jardi in November 1948 of his speech to Westminster School, “Atomic Energy and the Future of Europe”, with possibly his letter to Walter Marseille of May 1948. See “Bertrand Russell and Preventive War” by Ray Perkins, Jr., Russell, n.s. 14 (1994): 135–53.

• 7

  war hysteria It is not known quite how BR was affected by war hysteria, but anxiety over Britain’s possible defeat would have contributed.