BR TO ANNA MELISSA GRAVES, 25 FEB. 1947
BRACERS 56375. TLS(X). Swarthmore College
Proofread by K. Blackwell

<letterhead>
27 Dorset House
Gloucester Place
N.W.1.
25th February, 1947.

Miss A.M. Graves,
P.O. Box 344,
Pikesville (Baltimore 8),
Maryland,
U.S.A.

Dear Miss Graves,

Thank you for your letter and for your book. I was very glad to get them, though I have not yet had time to read your book.1

I was never an absolute pacifist in the sense that I thought all wars unjustifiable. In fact when I worked with the Quakers during the first World War they were sometimes pained by my contention that, for instance, the American War of Independence had been justifiable. At the time of the second World War I felt that a world such as the Nazis desired would be intolerable, and that one of those situations had arisen for which I had always allowed. My son John took the same view and went into the British Navy. I don’t think that the fact of my having children influenced my opinions one way or the other. I will confess that I have less certainty now of having been right than I had at the time, because I think the Soviet Government just as bad as the Nazis. I lived in America from 1938 to 1944, and I think perhaps my patriotism was stimulated by the jocose indifference of the Californians until Pearl Harbour.

With all best wishes,

Yours very sincerely,
<signed> Bertrand Russell.

• 1

  your book Probably Both Deeper than and above the Mêlée: Letters from Europeans (Baltimore: Waverly Press, 1945). BR is discussed on pp. 402 and 407.