BR TO COUNTESS FRANCES RUSSELL, 2 DEC. 1895
BRACERS 53663. ALS. McMaster. SLBR 1: #69
Edited by N. Griffin. Proofread by A. Duncan and K. Blackwell

<Berlin>
Hotel Windsor
Dec. 2. 1895

Dearest Granny,

We have just got your nice long letter of Berlin reminiscences:1 we have been having skating the last few days, in lovely sunny frost — it has been sunny almost ever since we came — but today it is snowing hard, and the fine weather and skating seem to be at an end. We know no Prussian officers, and I must say, I am glad we don’t. Whenever I think of any particular evil in Germany, I always find, however remote it may seem, that it really springs from militarism and Alsace-Lorraine.2 I doubt if any historical crime has been more severely punished. But I have got such a hatred of the German army from it, that I could hardly bring myself to be polite even to an individual officer, tho’ of course individuals are not to blame. The odd thing is, that even the most cultivated and intelligent opponents of Social Democracy think its internationalism frightfully wicked. We were introduced to a delightful and most gentlemanly man, Professor Sering,3 but he said as a young man he had been hindered from joining them by the contempt they cast on the glories of the Franco-Prussian war — it never seemed to occur to him that these glories were in reality a bitter shame and disgrace.

I wonder if you have seen in the English papers that the whole organization of the Social Democrats has been declared illegal and dissolved? It has existed exactly in its present form for 5 years, but the police, in consequence of their raid the other day, have suddenly discovered it to be illegal.4 Such measures are petty and irritating, but are not likely to do the party any harm, rather the reverse. — They have imprisoned for three months a most admirable young man, Dr. Foerster,5 editor of the Journal of Ethical Culture, and not a S.D., because he blamed the Emperor for calling the S.D’s a rabble rout unworthy of the name of Germans. — We are too full of fury about everything to have any other thought. — I hope all goes well at P.L.

Your loving grandson
Bertrand Russell.

• 1

  letter of Berlin reminiscences The letter has not survived, but BR’s grandmother was in Berlin while her father was British Ambassador there from 1832 to 1834.

• 2

  Alsace-Lorraine Alsace-Lorraine was territory ceded by France to Germany at the end of the Franco-Prussian war of 1870–71.

• 3

  Professor Sering Probably Max Sering (1857–1934), an agrarian economist and professor at the University of Berlin.

• 4

  Social Democrats … discovered it to be illegal The German Social Democrat Party had been outlawed in 1878 under the so-called “Exceptional Law”. This law had been allowed to lapse in 1890. On 29 November 1895, after a month of almost daily political trials of leading Social Democrats, the police banned most of the organizations associated with the Social Democrats in Berlin, raiding offices and private homes in their search for evidence. New legislation was not invoked. Instead the police reactivated the repressive Coalition Laws that most German states had enacted after the failure of the 1848 revolutions.

• 5

  Dr. Foerster Friedrich Wilhelm Foerster, a teacher and pacifist. He had been convicted on 29 November for an article published in his weekly, Ethische Kultur.