Why Men Fight

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Why Men Fight Page 19

by Bertrand Russell


  changes required in 132–33;

  dogmatic, decay of 128–29;

  of Germany 73–74;

  and marriage 124;

  of material goods 70;

  origins 133;

  and patriotism 32, 33;

  personal and social aspects 129;

  teaching of 95, 97;

  traditional 132

  religious institutions 13

  religious toleration 147

  “Remarks at the Peace Banquet” x

  Renaissance 14, 128

  rent 79

  resistance to aggression, impulse of 8

  responsibility for war 52, 53

  Restoration 147

  reverence 93–94, 135, 149

  Roberts, Richard Charles 28n

  Rolland, Romain xvi–xvii

  Roman Empire 35, 58, 60, 117

  romantic movement 124, 142

  Rousseau, J.-J. 147

  Russian Revolution (1917) xiii

  sacrifice, impulses towards 33

  sanitation 40, 41

  science/scientific research 41, 58;

  men of science 137–38

  security 54, 85

  self-destruction, impulse to 2

  self-discipline 101, 102

  self-knowledge 150

  serfs 79

  sex relations, seriousness in 125–26

  sexual intercourse 137

  Shelley, P. B. 147

  sin 111

  social class 109;

  and worship of money 71, 72

  social class mobility 115

  social institutions 11

  socialism 23, 24, 30;

  aims of 75;

  early socialists 78;

  and individualism 25;

  and justice 81;

  Marxian 86;

  modern 81–82;

  and patriotism 34

  Somme offensive (1916) xii–xiii

  South American Republics 63

  sovereign, loyalty to 30

  Spanish-American War (1898) 58

  Sparta 99

  spinsters 119

  spirit, life of 144;

  harmony with instinct and mind 135–37;

  and impersonal feeling 134–35;

  and love 142;

  and religion 145

  spiritual insight 144

  State 24–45;

  aims of 35, 36;

  authority of 37;

  civil and military 62–64;

  and civilized community 31;

  competitive organization of 103;

  and education 94;

  external policy of 36;

  functions of see State functions;

  initiative, suppressing 35;

  and law 25–26, 38;

  positive purposes 42–43;

  possessiveness of 153, 154;

  power of see State power;

  property ownership 77;

  religion, attitude towards 97;

  selfishness of 29;

  strong organizations within 44;

  and worship of money 73

  State functions 24–25;

  civil 62;

  nonessential 25;

  positive 39–40

  State power 26–30;

  acquiescence in 30;

  evil nature of 27, 34;

  excessive 38;

  and external force 36;

  and public opinion 28–29;

  and war 29

  status quo 52, 83, 86, 100

  St. Augustine 161

  sterilization 119

  St. Francis 129

  Stoicism 157

  Strachey, Lytton xii

  strikes 37–38, 47

  strong impulses 5, 7

  subjectivism 156, 157

  success 10, 12;

  and making of money 59, 70, 94

  suicide 28n

  Sweden, separation from Norway 36

  sympathy 2

  syndicalism xv, 24, 34, 43, 88

  syndicalist prosecutions 26

  thought 106, 140, 141;

  new 147–48

  thrift 72, 74

  thwarted growth 11, 21

  Tolstoy, Leo 114

  trade unions 19

  tree, growth of 11–12

  Trevelyan, Charles P. xv

  tribal feeling 30, 31, 32

  tyranny 14, 26, 36;

  German 62

  Uberti, Farinata degli 50

  unconsciousness 4

  understanding 2

  Union of Democratic Control xiii, xv

  unity 149–50;

  of nations 65–66

  universities 43

  Unwin, Stanley xiv

  Utopias 57

  violence, suppression and promotion by State 34

  virtue, pursuit of 157

  vital energy, misuse of 149

  wage-earning system 87–88

  war:

  efficiency in, promotion of 34;

  as enemy of freedom 45;

  impulses towards 48, 56, 57, 159;

  as institution 46–68;

  main cause of 66;

  phenomenon of 27;

  versus police force 47;

  power in 36;

  and power of State outside own borders 29;

  see also foreigners:

  force against

  War and Peace (periodical) x

  war fever 3, 48, 53, 55

  Waterloo, battle of 96

  wealth 48–49, 59

  Webb, Sidney 114n

  West, Arthur Graeme xvi

  “white feather” women 28n

  Whitman, Walt 18–19

  “Why Nations Love War” x

  wife, rights in marriage 121–22

  will 3–4, 7, 103, 155

  Wollstonecraft, Mary 147

  women:

  adultery, penalty for 112;

  career-minded 113–14, 116, 119;

  emancipation of 113, 114, 117, 147;

  marriage pressures 115–16;

  spinsters 119;

  wife, rights in marriage 121–22

  Woods, Professor xiv

  work:

  intrinsic interest in 80;

  mechanical 88;

  where wages sole criterion 6, 57, 74, 86;

  working hours 76

  working-classes, increasing nature of 115, 116

  world-State 39, 60, 62, 66

  World War I see Great War (World War I)

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  Copyright

  First published in 1916

  by George Allen & Unwin Ltd.

  First published in the Routledge Classics in 2010

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  ISBN 0-203-86469-7 Master e-book ISBN

  ISBN 10: 0–415–48738–2

  ISBN 10: 0–203–86469–7 (ebk)

  ISBN 13: 978–0–415–48738–2

  ISBN 13: 978–0–203–86469–2 (ebk)

  Примечания

  1

  1 Bertrand Russell, Library of Living Philosophers, vol. 5, The Philosophy of Bertrand Russell, ed. Paul Arthur Schilpp (Evanston, Illinois, 1944), p. 726.

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  2

  2 Principles of Social Reconstruction (London, 1916), p. 67.

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  3

  3 Michael Holroyd, Lytton Strachey (London, 1968), vol. 2, p. 173.

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  4

  4 Principles of Social Reconstruction, p. 167.

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  5

  5 Bertrand Russell, The Autobiography of Bertrand Russell, 1914–1942 (London, 1968), vol. 2, p. 20.

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  6

  6 Ibid., p. 76.

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  7

  1 On this subject compare Bernard Hart’s “Psychology of Insanity” (Cam-bridge University Press, 1914), chap. v, especially pp. 62–5.

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  8

  2 This was written before Christianity had become punishable by ten years’ penal servitude under the Military Service Act (No. 2). [Note added in 1916.]

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  1 The blasphemy prosecutions.

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  2 The syndicalist prosecutions. [The punishment of conscientious objectors must now be added, 1916.]

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  3 “In a democratic country it is the majority who must after all rule, and the minority will be obliged to submit with the best grace possible” (Westminster Gazette on Conscription, December 29, 1915).

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  4 “Some very strong remarks on the conduct of the ‘white feather’ women were made by Mr. Reginald Kemp, the Deputy Coroner for West Middlesex, at an inquest at Ealing on Saturday on Richard Charles Roberts, aged thirty-four, a taxicab driver, of Shepherd’s Bush, who committed suicide in consequence of worry caused by his rejection from the Army and the taunts of women and other amateur recruiters.

  It was stated that he tried to join the Army in October, but was rejected on account of a weak heart. That alone, said his widow, had depressed him, and he had been worried because he thought he would lose his licence owing to the state of his heart. He had also been troubled by the dangerous illness of a child.

  A soldier relative said that the deceased’s life had been made ‘a perfect misery’ by women who taunted him and called him a coward because he did not join the Army. A few days ago two women in Maida Vale insulted him ‘something shocking.’

  The Coroner, speaking with some warmth, said the conduct of such women was abominable. It was scandalous that women who knew nothing of individual circumstances should be allowed to go about making unbearable the lives of men who had tried to do their duty. It was a pity they had nothing better to do. Here was a man who perhaps had been driven to death by a pack of silly women. He hoped something would soon be done to put a stop to such conduct” (Daily News, July 26, 1915).

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  5 By England in South Africa, America in the Philippines, France in Morocco, Italy in Tripoli, Germany in South-West Africa, Russia in Persia and Manchuria, Japan in Manchuria.

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  6 This was written in 1915.

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  7 This would be as true under a syndicalist régime as it is at present.

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  16

  1 These changes, which are to be desired on their own account, not only in order to prevent war, will be discussed in later lectures.

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  17

  2 What is said on this subject in the present lecture is only preliminary, since the subsequent lectures all deal with some aspect of the same problem.

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  1 Booth’s “Life and Labour of the People,” vol. iii.

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  19

  1 As regards the education of young children, Madame Montessori’s methods seem to me full of wisdom.

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  2 We have reached lately a depth even lower than the distortion of the minds of children. Children are to be organized so as to become the innocent tools for hate and cruelty to be implanted through parental affection. For the way of doing this see the Teacher’s World, September 5, 1917. On a given day every boy and girl in school is to write a letter to a friend on active service. “Their letters must give their hearers a hearty greeting; a real firm hand-shake. The letters must not just say, ‘How do you do?’ but ‘You are winning. We are proud of you. We’ll see it through with you. Everybody is helping,’ and so forth.” “Above all, the letters must be natural. … The older children should write their letters entirely by themselves. The younger ones should have as little help as possible. Very young ones might just send a cheery line or two from the teacher’s copy on the blackboard.”

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  3 What Madame Montessori has achieved in the way of minimizing obedience and discipline with advantage to education is almost miraculous.

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  1 There was a provision for suits in forma pauperis, but for various reasons this provision was nearly useless; a new and somewhat better provision has recently been made, but is still very far from satisfactory.

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  2 The following letter (New Statesman, December 4th, 1915) illustrates the nature of his activities:—

  Divorce and War. To the Editor of the “New Statesman.”

  Sir,—The following episodes may be of interest to your readers. Under the new facilities for divorce offered to the London poor, a poor woman recently obtained a decree nisi for divorce against her husband, who had often covered her body with bruises, infected her with a dangerous disease, and committed bigamy. By this bigamous marriage the husband had ten illegitimate children. In order to prevent this decree being made absolute, the Treasury spent at least £200 of the taxes in briefing a leading counsel and an eminent junior counsel and in bringing about ten witnesses from a city a hundred miles away to prove that this woman had committed casual acts of adultery in 1895 and 1898. The net result is that this woman will probably be forced by destitution into further adultery, and that the husband will be able to treat his mistress exactly as he treated his wife, with impunity, so far as disease is concerned. In nearly every other civilized country the marriage would have been dissolved, the children could have been legitimated by subsequent marriage, and the lawyers employed by the Treasury would not have earned the large fees they did from the community for an achievement which seems to most other lawyers thoroughly anti-social in its effects. If any lawyers really feel that society is benefited by this sort of litigation, why cannot they give their services for nothing, like the lawyers who assisted the wife? If we are to practise economy in war-time, why cannot the King’s Proctor be satisfied with a junior counsel only? The fact remains that many persons situated like the husband and wife in question prefer to avoid having illegitimate children, and the birth-rate accordingly suffers.

  “The other episode is this. A divorce was obtained by Mr. A. against Mrs. A. and Mr. B. Mr. B. was married and Mrs. B., on hearing of the divorce proceedings, obtained a decree nisi against Mr. B. Mr. B. is at any moment liable to be called to the Front, but Mrs. B. has for some months declined to
make the decree nisi absolute, and this prevents him marrying Mrs. A., as he feels in honour bound to do. Yet the law allows any petitioner, male or female, to obtain a decree nisi and to refrain from making it absolute for motives which are probably discreditable. The Divorce Law Commissioners strongly condemned this state of things, and the hardship in question is immensely aggravated in war-time, just as the war has given rise to many cases of bigamy owing to the chivalrous desire of our soldiers to obtain for the de facto wife and family the separation allowance of the State. The legal wife is often united by similar ties to another man. I commend these facts to consideration in your columns, having regard to your frequent complaints of a falling birth-rate. The iniquity of our marriage laws is an important contributory cause to the fall in question.

  Yours, etc.,

  E. S. P. Haynes.

  November 29th.

 

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