From Imperialism to Free Trade

good in international relations and said that politics functioned according to interests and not moral abstractions. Moreover, as for 10 Russell to Couturat, 18 Dec. 1899, Couturat Papers, Bibliotheque de la Ville, La Chaux-de-Fonds, Switzerland (photocopy). My translation. 11 Couturat to Russell, 24 Dec. 1899. 12 Russell to Couturat, 16 Jan. 1900. 13 Russell to Couturat, 24 Mar. 1900 and 5 May 1900. 14 Couturat to Russell, 6 Apr. 1900. This content downloaded from 157.55.39.207 on Thu, 20 Oct 2016 03:59:58 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms FROM IMPERIALISM TO FREE TRADE 427 rights and justice, Russell could not them any weight in international affairs.'5 This fundamental impasse between the two men remained throughout 1900 even though Russell became calmer as British arms began to prevail in South Africa. Then early in 1901 Russell's conceptions of imperialism and international relations were altered dramatically and he came to espouse Couturat's interpretations on South Africa specifically and imperialism generally. In one of the most extraordinary passages in his Autobiography, Russell relates how he in February 1901 experienced a conversion which transformed the beliefs which he had expressed to Couturat. He had gone to Alfred North Whitehead's home to find Mrs. Whitehead, who suffered from heart problems, in severe pain. Confronted by her agony, Russell found that Suddenly the ground seemed to give way beneath me.... Within five minutes I went through some such reflections as the following: the loneliness of the human soul is unendurable; nothing can penetrate it except the highest intensity of the sort of love that religious teachers have preached; whatever does not spring from this motive is harmful, or at best useless; it follows that war is wrong ... that the use of force is to be deprecated.... At the end of those five minutes, I had become a completely different person. .. . Having been an Imperialist, I became during those five minutes a pro-Boer and a Pacifist .. .16 While this one sudden mystic revelation does not account completely for Russell's conversion to pacifism and rejection of imperialism, the impact of the experience cannot be minimized, for it opened his mind and emotions to completely new values. Nevertheless, Russell's renunciation of imperialism was a slower process than he claimed and it can only be charted in the Couturat correspondence. As late as 25 June 1902, soon after the end of the South African Russell wrote to Couturat that the concentration camps disgusted me ... and I find myself less imperialist than formerly. However, it was not until after the beginning of Chamberlain's crusade that Russell could inform Couturat that Domestic Politics are very worrying. I am passionately for free trade; moreover, I 15 Russell to Couturat, 24 Mar. 1900. When, by late spring 1900, the British appeared to have the situation in South Africa well in hand, Russell wrote to Couturat that he could resume their correspondence because he was now calmer. Russell to Couturat, 21 June 1900. 16 Autobiography, I, 146. Russell was never a pacifist who claimed that war was wrong under all circumstances. He believed that almost all wars could be avoided or, if started, were not worth fighting. Even in World War I he maintained that some wars might be legitimate. After much travail he disavowed his pacifism in 1939 and supported the war against Hitler. For the complexities of Russell's pacifism see Dr. Jo Newberry's excellent work, Bertrand Russell and the Pacifists in the First World War, unpublished McMaster Ph.D. thesis, 1975, ch. III and her conclusions. Also note the Autobiography, II, 287-9. This content downloaded from 157.55.39.207 on Thu, 20 Oct 2016 03:59:58 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms

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