RUSSELL NOTES DECLINE IN WORLD SECURITY SINCE 1890

Taking as his theme "Significant Changes in the World in the Past Sixty Years" or "Some Difficulties in Growing Old," Bertrand Russell, noted philospher and mathematician, last night told a large gathering in the Eliot House dining room that the main difference between the world of 1940 and the 19th century is the decay of security in Europe.

He said that for a man who had been brought up in the traditions and atmosphere of the 19th century, living in the modern world was a difficult task. He remembers Disraeli, his grandfather who had known Napoleon, and above all a world that was expected to endure forever free from violent upheavals or geographical change.

In the United States alone does this feeling of security remain, he said, and Europeans come here to study the past, to see what Europe was like in the 19th century.

Russell traced this insecurity as coming from Russia, with the revolution of 1917, and moving gradually west until it now has reached England and may possibly cross the Atlantic. He blamed economic conditions of the common man as in great part responsible for this movement. When his income is rising the common man is content and gets along with his fellow men; when his income falls he becomes restless and this agitation tends to increase the fall. Men gather in groups, each hating the other, with war the eventual outcome.

"The security of the 19th century was the result of a general rise in income. The restlessness of the present day is caused by an economic decline," Russell stated.

The speaker compared the current situation to Rome in the fifth century when culture and civilization were over thrown by the German invasion and driven to monasteries for 600 years. "Today there are no monasteries or any places where freedom from world events can exist," he commented. "Inefficiency saved civilization in the fifth century, but the efficient darkness' that might settle on the world of tomorrow world stand a much better chances of stamping it out."

"Civilization has been swept away before and can be again," said Russell, attacking those who sit back and say "everything will work out all right."

Thus culture must rise or fall with political changes, he explained. "Because technical forces have unified the world we must think of world interests and not be partial to the interests of any single country," and "should reconcile our ideals to this standard."

In closing Russell stated that above all we must have the intellectual courage to stick to our political, social, and economic ideals in the face of continual attack. "The alternative is a kind of cynicism and subtle adaptability which is ignoble," he commented. Those who refuse to change with political changes are often with political changes are often killed off, but these who man age to live through bad times are generally the worst," he concluded