COMMENT

Mr. Bertrand Russell, the English Liberal philosopher, who has been forbidden, under the provisions of the British military service act, to leave England for the purpose of lecturing at Harvard University, and who has been commanded to live within a restricted area of England, where his movements can be strictly observed, is by no means the spy or marplot which these prohibitions might be taken to indicate, He is merely so much the philosopher that he cannot take a national view of the questions involved in the war. Like Woodrow Wilson, he regards the whole world as mad, with one nation as much to blame as another for the general outbreak of insanity. This being, apparently, his view, Mr. Russell can hardly complain of his own treatment by the British Government; he must admit that, being in a madhouse, it is natural that the inmates, who regard themselves as sane, should after their fashion treat him as a madman. To escape the rigid supervision of the authorities in time of war, a philosopher would have to detach himself not merely from the point of view of his countrymen, but from that of the planet on which he lives, and go to live not, perhaps, on Mars, but on some heavenly body with a more pacific name. Inasmuch as Mr. Bertrand Russell is a social philosopher, it is to be supposed that he knows this himself, and is not chafing unduly at the restrictions that are put upon him. These are to be regarded as a part of the development of militant nationalism-- a human sentiment which was never more intense than at the present time.

It devolves upon the philosophers to show common sense--a faculty which after all is not in such direct conflict with philosophy as some may suppose. That prince of railing philosophers, George Bernard Shaw, is believed to be still at large in England, and to be free to come and go. We notice a certain diminution of his controversial output, and it is to be presumed that, in the exercise of the canny quality which he has shown on other occasions, Mr. Shaw has repressed himself in the interest of his personal safety. Mr. Bertrand Russell is not so canny as Mr. Bernard Shaw, but in the interest of the student body of Harvard, which would assuredly be benefited by listening to him, it is to be regretted that he is not. Boston Transcript.