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In this letter to The New York Times, written six weeks before the press conference announcing the Russell-Einstein Manifesto, Russell underscores the paramount importance of the abolition of war. The Manifesto, essentially completed in April, was fashioned from his earlier BBC Christmas address, “Man's Peril.” There too Russell emphasizes the need for abolishing war and says that those who hope to solve the problem of nuclear annihilation by (merely) prohibiting nuclear weapons are espousing a hope which "is illusory". In his February letter to Einstein, Russell had said that an agreement to prohibit nuclear weapons would be “wholly futile”. But the Manifesto concedes some positive value to such an agreement which “we should ... welcome ..., though only as a first step”. Here, in this May 25 letter, Russell's tone is slightly less positive, claiming that such a ban “would do very little good”. Ray Monk (The Ghost of Madness, p. 377) speculates that the Manifesto's positive tone regarding a ban on nuclear weapons was due to Russell's giving way to Communist opinion and interests. This may be partly true. Russell at the time was trying to include perspectives on peace from both sides of the Iron Curtain. But another point seems at least as weighty. The value of a ban on nuclear weapons depends on how the ban is to be undertaken. If it is merely a substitute for the abolition of war, rather than an ingredient in a larger movement to rid the world of the institution of war, it is not likely to be very effective for the reasons that Russell states. But as part of a more radical abolition of war itself, it could be an initiating and reinforcing component of a general movement towards enforceable world law, i.e., world government.
25 May 1955 To the Editor of The New York Times
Sir, Yours etc.,
Bertrand Russell
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