BR TO W.W. NORTON & COMPANY, INC. / WARDER NORTON, 5 APR. 1940
BRACERS 47315. ALS. Norton papers, Columbia U. SLBR 2: #445
Edited by N. Griffin. Proofread by K. Blackwell and A. Duncan

212 Loring Avenue,
Los Angeles.1
April 5, 1940

Dear Warder

Thank you very much for your letter of April 2 and for your telegram. We are much relieved to have some account of what is happening. The Board of Higher Education has never written to me since the original letter saying they had appointed me unanimously; officially, I do not know that anything has happened since. As for the choice of Fraenkel, it was made on Roger Baldwin’s advice, which I naturally took as he was the first to suggest that I ought to have Counsel. Your telegram arrived too late. Fraenkel has the great merit that he is doing the work for nothing: otherwise, I, of course, cannot judge of the merits of different lawyers.

I very much hope that the Board of Higher Education will appeal. It will be most unfortunate if they do not.

I am accepting your advice to make no public appearances at present, though my instinct would be the other way, and financial considerations will become important if the appointment is not secured in the end. I am whole-heartedly anxious to avoid Communist and near-Communist bodies.

A great many lies have appeared about me, including, e.g., a wholly manufactured interview in which I was supposed to have said that the Court’s verdict was “a blow between the eyes”.2

We are both most grateful to you for your invaluable help and advice. Peter has an almost unbelievable amount to do, as I have to go on with my university work whatever happens. It is a great relief to us both that your decision was against her going to New York at present. I can get leave to come when it is important, but not easily otherwise.

Love from us both. Peter asks me to tell you how immensely relieved she is at not having to go to New York to face a number of Important Persons.

Yours sincerely
Bertrand Russell

• 1

  [document] Proofread against a microfilm printout of the original.

• 2

  wholly manufactured interview … “a blow between the eyes” In The Citizen-News (Hollywood), 30 March 1940 (and widely reprinted; see B&R S40.01).