The Elk Mountain pilot., 1924-05-29
Eminent Britisher tells us THINGS

HAD Bertrand Russell been more
interested in becoming the third Earl
Russell of England, which is his
birthright, and less interested in man
as the proper study of mankind, he
would likely have spent a recent
week upon the ancestral estate won
dering how he could pay his taxes,
instead of exhibiting himself in st.
Louis as humorous philosopher.
He might just as well have been
the Hon. Bertrand Arthur William
Russell, British Tory and mathema-
tician, late lecturer and fellow of
Trinity college, Cambridge, authority
upon the atom, and come to US upon
some solemn political mission as the
veriest beef eater in the kings set,
as to have come here as plain Ber-
trand Russell whom England had put
in Jail because of the terrible things
he kept saying during the World war,
and as the worlds most famous critic
of that civilization which everybody
in his own and twenty other coun-
tries worked so hard to save
An Intellectual Giant
Anyway, there he was sitting be-
fore me-a meek little man who had
his choice and took the hard way to
the discontinue of his family and
the annoyance of his caste. 1t did
wisp of humanity was that intellec-
tual giant who can so easily bend the
utopian bow of Ulysses.
Some years ago Bertrand Russell
was in the United States for three
months as exch"nge professor at Har-
ward. He is in the United States now
as lecturer. One listening to him
on the platform cannot escape the
amusing reflection that almost any
American audience would prefer to
hear senator say nothing in a re-
sounding manner than hear this real
ly fine thinker expound his philoso-
ply as badly as only Briton could
| do it.
1t was in an interval snatched from
seeing the town that | got Bertrand
Russell in a corner and made him
testify exactly as if he had been
dragged before one of our senatorial
committees.
Didn't you say you would rather
see Europe go to a complete collapse
than adopt the mechanistic civiliza-
tion of America?" I asked.
He gulped hard and cast about
helplessly for way of escape.
'Yes. / said it," he admitted weak
1y.
So Many Minute
What l mean is the habit of re-
garding mankind as raw material to
be nodded by our scientific manipu-
lation into whatever form may hap
pen to suit our fancy. The worst
thing that could happen to Europe
would be to find herself upon the
Ford basis of turning out so many of
this or that minute. That is what
the Bolsheviki are trying to do to
Russia They are crazy about indus
trialization, and like the Japanese
they hope to make their country rich
and powerful by machinery.
"There is also life by doctrine. l
mean something which exists equally
in imperialism, Bolshevism and the
Y. M. C. A., something which dis
tinguishes all these from the Orien-
tai outlook and which I, for my part,
consider very evil. The essence of
the matter. from the point of view
of the individual who has this point
of view, is the cultivation, of will
at the expense of perception, the fer
vent moral belief that it is our duty
to force other people to realize our
conception of the world. 1t involves
contempt for mankind except as
potential converts and the belief that
progress consists in the spread of a
doctrine. 1t involves a belief in gov
ernment and life against nature,
This view, tho / have called it
mechanistic, is as old as religion, tho
mechanism has given it new and
more virulent forms.
THAT is why was SO impressed by
China when l went over there to
teach. The Chinese are both ineffi-
cient and corrupt, probably the twin
hopes cf all civilization. They also
have the remarkable quality of abid-
ing the beliefs of others To be
Buddhist in China does not mean that
other religions are untrue. Nor dc
the Chinese make any distinction be-
tween old-fashioned brigandage out,
side of law and modern brigandage
inside the law. The brigand whose
army holds Manchuria, for instance
is their Standard Oil company. An
other great brigand and his army is
the prototype of your sugar trust oil