BR TO GILBERT MURRAY, 9 APR. 1943
BRACERS 52407. ALS. Murray papers, Bodleian
Edited by W. Bruneau. Proofread by A.G. Bone

Little Datchet Farm
Malvern, R.D.1
Pennsylvania
9 April 1943.

My dear Gilbert,

Thank you for your letter of March 13, which arrived this morning; also for your earlier letter about Barnes. He is a man who likes quarrels; for no reason that I can fathom, he suddenly broke his contract with me. In the end, probably, I shall get damages out of him; but the law’s delays are as great as in Shakespeare’s time. Various things I have undertaken to do will keep me here till the end of October; then (D.V.) I shall return to England — Peter and Conrad too, if the danger from submarines is not too great. We can’t bear being away from home any longer. In England I shall have to find some means of earning a livelihood. I should be quite willing to do Government propaganda, as my views on this war are quite orthodox. I wish I could find a way of making my knowledge of America useful; I find that English people, when they try to please American opinion, are very apt to make mistakes. But I would accept any honest work that would bring in a bare subsistence for 3 people.

It is not growing fanaticism, but growing democracy, that causes my troubles. Did you ever read the life of Averroes? He was protected by kings, but hated by the mob, which was fanatical. In the end, the mob won. Free thought has always been a perquisite of aristocracy. So is the intellectual development of women. I am sorry to hear Mary has to do the housework. My Peter’s whole time is absorbed in housework, cooking, and looking after Conrad; she hardly ever has time to read. The eighteenth and nineteenth centuries were a brief interlude in the normal savagery of man; now the world has reverted to its usual condition. For us, who imagined ourselves democrats, but were in fact the pampered products of aristocracy, it is unpleasant.

I am very sorry to hear about Lucy Silcox;¹ if you see her, please give her my love and sympathy.

One reason for coming home is that we don’t want to send Conrad to an American school. Not only is the teaching bad, but the intense nationalism is likely to cause in his mind a harmful conflict between home and school. We think submarines, bombs, and poor diet a smaller damage. But all this is still somewhat undecided.

I shall finish my big History of Philosophy during the summer — you won’t like it, because I don’t admire Aristotle.

My John is in England, training for the navy. Kate is still at College, at Radcliffe. She wants, after the war, to get into something like Quaker Relief work — She specializes on German, and is unable to feel prescribed hatreds.

Give my love to Mary — It would be a real happiness to see you again — old friends grow fewer.

Yours ever
Bertrand Russell

¹ A well-known liberal schoolmistress.