Peace? and Freedom?:
RUSSELL, BERTRAND
Bertrand Russell - Sidney Hook: A Debate The basic issues of our time are involved in the debate between Sidney Hook and Bertrand Russell. In reductivist form, the problem has been posed as whether...
...Those who are prepared to live like men, and if necessary, die like men," Hook wrote, "have the best prospect of surviving as free men, and escaping the fate of both jackals and lions...
...For it is obvious that, if Western Europe were overrun by the Russians while America looked on passively, the world-wide victory of Communism would become very much more probable...
...AND FREEDOM...
...Hook is much impressed by the fanaticism of Communists, but, for my part, most of the Communists that I have met were less fanatical than Hook...
...Academician Ivan Malek of the Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences, who, two years ago, acted as host to a similar symposium in Prague attended by many British delegates, had been expected to read a paper, but was refused a visa by the British authorities...
...Russell's position is that "Communists and anti-Communists can live together, or die together," and he would nut have them die together even if that survival were bought at the price of freedom...
...The calm assumption that of course the other side would cheat, but of course our side would not...
...though perhaps he would have no objection to anything that Hook wished to say...
...The Anglo-French Suez expedition was a silly crime as wicked in intention as the Russian suppression of Hungary—though not as harmful, since it failed...
...Massachusetts and Connecticut there is legislation against contraceptive propaganda or practice...
...Scene I. of The Merchant of Venice, which, slightly adapted to modern circumstances, says: "Hath not a Communist eyes...
...hath not a Communist hands, organs, dimensions, senses, passions...
...It now feels that the "balance of terror" is a trifle terrifying...
...For my part, I wish to see them live together, and I wish most earnestly to see them not die together...
...Herter's pronouncement, with the comments reported by Kahn, show that the attitude which I hold and which Hook repudiates is, in fact, the attitude of the American Government with the support of American public opinion...
...I think those who speak as Hook does sometimes forget that we are close allies of Generalissimo Francisco Franco, who is hardly more friendly to freedom than Nikita Khrushchev is...
...Hook adopted a well-known device in controversy, which is to accuse your adversary of something that he never said and, when he protests, to treat his protest as a recantation...
...On April 10, also, five West Germans were sentenced to prison as members of the World Peace Council on the ground that this body is a front for the Communist party...
...On the other hand, in my Common Sense and Nuclear Warfare, I had to modify, by the advice of the publisher, a suggestion which appeared in my original draft and in the English edition, but which was considered possibly unsuitable for the American public...
...This accusation is entirely unfounded...
...Hook states explicitly that, if there is an agreement between East and West, the West will of course abide by it, but the East is very likely not to...
...I will begin with a personal complaint...
...The best answer to fanatical aversions occurs in Act III...
...But the Home Office refused visas to the expected Russian delegates...
...I replied: "Then, I suppose, you think there should be no law against murder...
...The American Government and American public opinion evidently prefer this to large-scale American death...
...To come to more serious matters: Hook considers that the differences between East and West in the current Geneva conference for the cessation of nuclear tests are very important, and are such as to show the United States wholly in the right...
...As regards the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the color question, I note that J. Edgar Hoover at the beginning of April told the House Appropriations Committee that he had under investigation 160 organizations suspected of Communist infiltration, and among these, he says, the major targets were Negro, social welfare, political and labor groups...
...Communists and anti-Communists can live together, or die together, or, just possibly, arrive at the superiority of one of the two groups...
...Kahn concludes, "No American that I have spoken to who was at all serious about the matter believed that U.S...
...Another misrepresentation in Hook's recent article is the suggestion that my advice has been addressed only to the West, and that Russia has not heard such parts of it as might be unpalatable to Communists...
...After all the self-righteous assurances that America always abides by treaties...
...Western Europe has heard these sotto voce remarks with bewilderment...
...Hook's article in THE NEW LEADER of July 7-14, 1958, has the title "Bertrand Russell Retreats," and the accusation of retreat is repeated in his latest article...
...fed with the same food, hurt with the same weapons, subject to the same diseases, healed by the same means, warmed and cooled by the same winter and summer, as a Capitalist is...
...On March 31, a symposium on the continuous culture of micro-organisms was held in London under the auspices of the Society of Chemical Industry...
...Secretary of State Christian Herter, in response to a question, made the following statement: "I cannot conceive of any President involving us in an all-out nuclear war unless the fact showed clearly we are in danger of all-out devastation ourselves, or that actual moves have been made toward devastating ourselves...
...if necessary, has lately learned, with understandable dismay, that there is considerable doubt as to whether the U.S...
...I was given to understand that all sons of very rich Americans are officially virtuous...
...Teller said that nothing should be prohibited unless detection of it were certainly possible...
...I will, therefore, say no more on the subject...
...He reports that all of them, at first, said that of course America would fulfill her obligations, but...
...All these examples of "freedom" occurred during a single fortnight...
...Nor have I said that the West has less freedom than it had...
...But there are matters even more serious than this...
...He thereupon changed the subject...
...A passage in my debate with Edward Teller on Edward R. Murrow's "Small World" television program was omitted in the shortened reproduction which I saw...
...As to this, I have already said my say in your pages...
...but once this has been granted it should be admitted that our present courses involve a far greater probability of far worse disasters than any that are to be feared from more conciliatory policies...
...Herman Kahn, in an article in the Stanford Research Institute Journal (reprinted in Survival, March-April, 1960...
...I advise Sidney Hook to look up the original and ponder my adaptations...
...retaliation would be justified—no matter what our commitments were—if more than half of our population would be killed...
...One of the things which I find most regrettable in Hook and the controversialists of the Kremlin is the assumption that one's own side is wholly virtuous and the other side wholly base...
...I have written for them articles intentionally unpalatable in parts, and these articles were published uncut...
...Both Hook and Russell are eminent philosophers, teachers and writers whose previous debates in THE NEW LEADER have caused international comment, stimulated discussion and thrown new light on the issues which divide them and the world today, the issues which divide men everywhere...
...For my part, I consider the remaining differences trivial, and I am persuaded that, if either the Western or the Soviet negotiators had any real wish to reach agreement, a treaty could very quickly be concluded...
...would, in fact, fulfill its treaty obligations...
...But to hear some champions of the West speaking, one would never guess that the other side can be equally sincere in its suspicions...
...The foolish, antiquated imperialism of the French in Algeria and the British in Cyprus has been exasperating to anyone who is either sane or humane...
...This is entirely untrue...
...is made by both sides...
...I hope that Hook will note that I have not said either that the Communists are more trustworthy or have more freedom than the West, or even that they are as trustworthy or have as much freedom as the West...
...To pass to quite another field, in France...
...I will give only a few illustrating the freedom which is supposed to prevail in the West...
...I say only that it has less freedom than it boasts and that it is not as impeccably trustworthy as it sometimes thinks it is...
...If this worst possibility is to be prevented, it is not enough for each side to bristle with H-bombs ready to be fired off whenever a flight of starlings is mistaken for enemy missiles...
...On April 10, a conference on nuclear disarmament was held in London at which there were delegates from 20 countries, including East Germany, Poland and Hungary...
...By Bertrand Russell SIDNEY HOOK'S article, "Peace and Freedom" (NL, April 11), demands a reply from me, though, after our previous encounter, it is not altogether easy to find anything new to say...
...PEACE...
...This was to the effect that those who play the game of "chicken" are often the sons of very rich Americans...
...after about 15 minutes of discussion and reflection, they decided that there was a maximum to the number of endurable deaths...
...Western Europe, which according to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization is to be defended by the U.S...
...Some put the maximum at 10 million, some at 60 million, others at various intermediate figures...
...Examples of Western self-righteousness could be multiplied indefinitely...
...In reductivist form, the problem has been posed as whether it is better to be a live jackal or a dead lion...
...It is necessary that each side should learn to treat the other with common courtesy and with the realization that we all live in glass houses...
...Hook's premise is that peace without freedom is unbearable and moreover bad politics...
...relates that he asked a number of Americans how many American deaths in a nuclear war they would put up with rather than ignore their NATO obligations if Western Europe and not America were attacked...
...I do not think either part of this assumption correct...
...I believe, however, that the Communists have much more freedom than they had a few years ago...
...There is nothing new about fanatical aversions...
...Let it be granted that there are risks...
Vol. 43 • May 1960 • No. 19
