Bertrand Russell

“ Knowledge with elevation of mind is the chief instrument of human progress; knowledge without elevation of mind easily becomes devilish, and increases the wounds which man inflicts on man. Men of learning should be the guardians of one of the sacred fires that illumine the darkness into which the human spirit is born: upon them depends the ideal of just thought, of disinterested pursuit of truth, which, if it had existed more widely, would have sufficed alone to prevent the present horror. ”

“ So long as the principle of self-defence is recognised as affording always a sufficient' justification for war, this tragic conflict of irresistible claims remains unavoidable. In certain cases, where there is a clash of differing civilisations, a war of self-defence may be justified on the same grounds as a war of principle. But I think that, even as a matter of practical politics, the principle of non-resistance contains an immense measure of wisdom, if only men would have the courage to carry it out. ”

“ They might have used their reputation and their freedom from political entanglements to mitigate the abhorrence with which the nations have come to regard each other, to help towards mutual understanding, to make the peace, when it comes, not a mere cessation due to weariness, but a fraternal reconciliation, springing from realisation that the strife has been a folly of blindness. They have chosen to do nothing of all this. Allegiance to country has swept away allegiance to truth. Thought has become the slave of instinct, not its master. ”

“ But of all the evils of war the greatest is the purely spiritual evil: the hatred, the injustice, the repudiation of truth, the artificial conflict, where, if the nations could once overcome the blindness of inherited instincts and the sinister influence of anti-social interests, such as those of armaments with their subservient press, it would be seen that there is a real consonance of interest and essential identity of human nature, and every reason to replace hatred by love. ”

“ If the authorities at the War Office were capable of philosophical reflection, they would see an interesting refutation of militarist beliefs in the terror with which a handful of pacifists appears to have inspired them. They have on their side the armed forces, the law, the press, and a vast majority of the public. The views which we advocate are held by few, and expressed by still fewer. To meet the material force on their side we have only the power of the spoken or written word, of the appeal from passion to reason, from fear to hope, from hate to love. ”

“ Everywhere the well-to-do, and the political parties which represent their interests, have been the chief agents in stirring up international hatred and in persuading the working man that his real enemy is the foreigner. Thus war, and the fear of war, has a double effect in retarding social progress: it diminishes the resources available for improving the condition of the wage-earning classes, and it distracts men's minds from the need and possibility of general improvement by persuading them that the way to better themselves is to injure their comrades in some other country. ”

“ And if any Power is to be supreme at sea, it must be better for international freedom that that Power should be England, whose army is too small to be a danger, rather than Germany, which has by far the most powerful army in the world. On these broad grounds, if I belonged to a neutral country, my sympathies would be against Germany. And as an Englishman, I believe that there is far more hope of reform in the foreign policy of my own country than in that of Germany. ”

“ This important question, which is the one on which the war is being fought, concerns what is called the hegemony of the Balkans, and this is entirely a question of prestige. Men desire the sense of triumph, and fear the sense of humiliation which they would have in yielding to the demands of another nation. Rather than forego the triumph, rather than endure the humiliation, they are willing to inflict upon the world all those disasters which it is now suffering and all that exhaustion and impoverishment which it must long continue to suffer. ”

“ It is useless to urge that the Turks have been for ages a by-word of cruelty, that the Austrians have primâ facie more responsibility for the war than the Germans, or that the Germans have contributed much of what is most valuable in the civilisation of the world. Such mere facts carry no weight: moral reprobation is nothing but an embodiment of hatred, and hatred is a mechanical product of biological instinct. It is unworthy of men who pretend to freedom of thought to be caught in the toils of this purely animal mechanism. ”

“ There are some seventy million Germans; with great good fortune we might, in a successful war, succeed in killing two millions of them. There would then still be sixty-eight million Germans, and in a few years the loss of the population due to the war would be made good. Germany is not merely a State, but a nation, bound together by a common language, common traditions, and common ideals. Whatever the outcome of the war, this nation will still exist at the end of it, and its strength cannot be permanently impaired. ”

“ The objects for which men have fought in the past, whether just or unjust, are no longer to be achieved by wars amongst civilised nations. A great weight of tradition, of financial interests, of political insincerity, is bound up with the anachronism of war. But it is perhaps not chimerical to hope that the present war, which has shocked the conscience of mankind more than any war in previous history, may produce a revulsion against antiquated methods, and may lead the exhausted nations to insist upon that brotherhood and co-operation which their rulers have hitherto denied them. ”

“ Men do right to desire strongly the victory of ideals which they believe to be important, but it is almost always a sign of yielding to undue impatience when they believe that what is valuable in their ideals can be furthered by substituting force for peaceful persuasion. To advocate democracy by war is only to repeat, on a vaster scale and with far more tragic results, the error of those who have sought it hitherto by the assassin's knife and the bomb of the anarchist. ”

“ German scholars repudiate English honours, English scholars say that Germany has done nothing of importance in learning. In a moment, all the great co-operative work for which academic bodies exist is set aside for the pleasure of indulging a bitter and trivial hatred.
This war is trivial, for all its vastness. No great principle is at stake, no great human purpose is involved on either side. The supposed ideal ends for which it is being fought are merely part of the myth. ”

“ Germans speak of England's brutal national egotism, and represent Germany as fighting to maintain a great ideal of civilisation against an envious world. Englishmen speak of Germany's ruthless militarism and lust of dominion, and represent themselves as fighting to uphold the sacredness of treaties and the rights of small nations. In a sober mood, many of the men who use such language would recognize that it is melodramatic and mythical. All nations, at all times, are egotistic. ”

“ Every nation is fighting in self-defence, every nation is fighting to destroy the tyranny of armaments, every nation is fighting to show that unprovoked aggression cannot be practised with impunity. Every nation pays homage to peace by maintaining that its enemies began the war. ”

“ I cannot but think that the men of learning, by allowing partiality to color their thoughts and words, have missed the opportunity of performing a service to mankind for which their training should have specially fitted them. The truth, whatever it may be, is the same in England, France, and Germany, in Russia and in Austria. ”

“ And without going to the very bottom of the social scale, economic progress is necessary for a good education, for a tolerable existence for women, and for that breadth and freedom of outlook upon which any solid and national advance must be based. It is not the most oppressed or the most ill-used who make an effective plea for social justice, for some reorganization of society which shall give less to the idler and more to the common man. ”

“ The question whether war is ever justified, and if so under what circumstances, is one which has been forcing itself upon the attention of all thoughtful men. It seems to me that no single one of the combatants is justified in the present war, and yet I cannot believe that war is under all circumstances a crime. Opinions on such a subject as war are the outcome of feeling rather than of thought: given a man's emotional temperament, his convictions, both on war in general and on any particular war which may occur during his lifetime can be predicted with tolerable certainty. ”

“ If the war lasts long, all that was good in the ideals of Germany, France, and England will have perished, as the ideals of Spartans and Athenians perished in the Peloponnesian War. All three races, with all that they have added to our civilisation, will have become exhausted, and victory, when it comes, will be as barren and as hopeless as defeat. ”

“ It is very seldom that a principle of genuine value to mankind can only be propagated by military force: as a rule, it is the bad part of men's principles, not the good part, which makes it necessary to fight for their defence. And for this reason the bad part rather than the good rises to prominence during the progress of the war of principle. A nation undertaking a war in defence of religious toleration would be almost certain to persecute those of its citizens who did not believe in religious toleration. ”

“ Nothing stands in its way except the pride of rulers who wish to remain uncontrolled by anything higher than their own will. When this great tragedy has worked itself out to its disastrous conclusion, when the passions of hate and self-assertion have given place to compassion with the universal misery, the nations will perhaps realise that they have fought in blindness and delusion, and that the way of mercy is the way of happiness for all. ”

“ This war is not being fought for any rational end: it is being fought because, at first, the nations wished to fight, and now they are angry and determined to win victory. Everything else is idle talk, artificial rationalising of instinctive actions and passions. When two dogs fight in the street, no one supposes that anything but instinct prompts them, or that they are inspired by high and noble ends. But if they were capable of what is called thought, if they had been taught that Dog is a rational animal, we may be sure that a superstructure of belief would grow up in them during the combat. ”

“ Probably the propaganda of Thought, which has never been popular at the War Office. The nation which rushed into the fray with the one watchword of 'freedom' on its lips is to sit mumchance, when—looking through and beyond the mists of war—its ablest and most honest minds seek to find some foothold for its thinking. ”

“ Russia is defending Slavdom against the menace of Teutonic aggression; Germany is defending Teutonic civilisation against the encroachments of the Slav; France is defending itself against a repetition of 1870; and England, which sought only the preservation of the status quo, is defending itself against a prospective menace to its maritime supremacy. The claim on each side to be fighting in self-defence appears to the other side mere wanton hypocrisy, because in each case the other side aims at conquest as the only means of self-defence. ”

“ I have not the means of giving similar illustrations of false beliefs in Germany and Austria. But in case this book should be read by any German or Austrian, I would beg him not to infer any peculiar English credulity, but to realise that such false stories are an accident of war, and that a great deal of what the German or Austrian public believes on apparently unimpeachable evidence is sure to be untrue. No man with any spark of justice in his nature wall deliberately wish to think worse of his enemies than they deserve. ”