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I BELIEVE   (1940)

I Believe. The Personal Philosophies of Twenty-Three Eminent Men and Women of Our Time. Published 1940 in Britain by George Allen and Unwin.
Review and notes by Rae West (of big-lies.org)
Interesting book, if you're in the mood to explore the self-reported outlooks of men and women who were obviously selected for popular fame as thinkers. There are no administrators, soldiers, bureaucrats, scientists, managers, executioners. And there are no opponents of the Jewish-based systems— no Belloc, no E D Butler, no Celine, no A H M Ramsay, no Nesta Webster. All are dead. The publication date of 1940 makes it fairly certain that the book was overshadowed by the declaration of war by Britain and France against Germany. (The USA, USSR, China, India were not included, yet). There is no discussion of Jews; the Federal Reserve system of 1913, and moves to prevent individuals in industrialised countries from owning gold, and Jewish migration, are almost completely omitted. It's possible nearly all the authors are Jews.

The chapters are fairly uniform in length; I'd guess a maximum of 5,000 words was suggested. The selection of authors, their timetables, their payment, and editing are completely omitted; there's no named editor of the collection. It seems an easy way to publish a book; simply contact well-known people or their agents and make them an offer. And some of these essays are clearly reprints, and in view of the declaration of war in Europe somewhat outdated. There are black-and-white photographs, all apart from Pearl Buck unacknowledged. These plates have stylistic 'character study' variations to suggest individuality within the limits of monochrome portrait conventions; e.g. Hitlerian Forster, pipe, watch, and handkerchief (Hogben), pipe and handkerchief and one disarranged eyebrow (Huxley), brushed long white locks and beard (Havelock Ellis). The book is unindexed; no tiresome problems with the contents!

Short biographies are given for each author, written in the style of Who's Who. Often enough books before 2000 have clippings from newspapers and biographical notes. It's easy to forget that information was rather hard to find. This of course allowed easy censorship: I haven't found a single example of a name change in any everyday source, which was helpful in concealing Jews, very many of whom have changed names in their family trees. Debrett's Peerage is designed to make Jews in the British aristocracy difficult to identify.

The names are capitalised here (from a scan of the book). Alphabetically, we have:   W H AUDEN  |  PEARL BUCK  |  STUART CHASE  |  ALBERT EINSTEIN  |  HAVELOCK ELLIS  |  E M FORSTER  |  J B S HALDANE  |  LANCELOT HOGBEN  |  JULIAN HUXLEY  |  SIR ARTHUR KEITH  |  HAROLD J LASKI  |  LIN YUTANG  |  EMIL LUDWIG  |  THOMAS MANN  |  JACQUES MARITAIN  |  JULES ROMAINS  |  BERTRAND RUSSELL  |  JOHN STRACHEY  |  JAMES THURBER  |  HENDRIK WILLEM VAN LOON  |  BEATRICE WEBB  |  H G WELLS  |  REBECCA WEST

Without going into Jewish issues, which most readers would not have understood, we have these authors by nominal nationality: 2 French: Maritain & Romain. 3 German: Einstein, Emil Ludwig, & Thomas Mann. 3 Americans: Pearl Buck, Stuart Chase, & James Thurber. 1 Dutch, but effectively American, Hendrik Willem van Loon. 1 Chinese, Lin Yutang. 2 Scots, Sir Arthur Keith and (perhaps) Rebecca West. And the rest, 11 more or less British: Auden (poet), Havelock Ellis (sex writer), E M Forster (novelist), J B S Haldane (Marxist science writer), Lancelot Hogben (maths/science populariser), Huxley (evolutionist), Harold Laski (Jewish academic), Bertrand Russell (philosopher), John Strachey (editor?), Beatrice Webb (Sovietologist?), H G Wells (novelist and historian)
Science in War (Penguin Books. 1940) 140-page paperback 'written by 25 scientists', anonymous, 'as an urgent practical need in a desperate situation' is NOT an attempt to prevent war, and its expansion into world war, but IS part of the pressure by Jews for War. This example is aimed at Britons. There were similar propaganda pushes around the world, mostly targeted by language. Reviewed here.
What I Believe (Allen & Unwin, 1966) is a similar book by the same publisher about 25 years later. The entire cast (18 of them this time) is different. There are no 'persons of color' yet. I'll list them here. A J AYER | KENNETH C BARNES | BOOTHBY | JOHN BRATBY | A CALDER-MARSHALL | MARGARET COLE | DAPHNE DU MAURIER | EDWARD GLOVER | ROSEMARY HAUGHTON | JACQUETTA HAWKES | MALCOLM MUGGERIDGE | KATHLEEN NOTT | J B PRIESTLEY | EDWARD G SLESINGER | NORMAN STJOHN-STEVAS | MERVYN STOCKWOOD | BARBARA WOOTON | JOHN WREN-LEWIS
Two similar books which I have are post-1945. This I Believe (Hamish Hamilton, 1953) 'Copyright 1953 by Help Inc.' suggesting some US source. It has 100 contributions about half British, about half American. There's a foreword by Edward R Murrow, wartime broadcaster of the Jewish viewpoint.
And Adventures of the Mind with 21 Essays, published in 1960 by Victor Gollancz, the Jewish propagandist. All these books are terrific sources of propaganda but of course need study of the clues.
This Changing World (1944; Routledge & Sons, 1944 edited by J R M Brumwell is fascinating as part of the Jewish anticipation of their victory in WW2. Aimed at Britain, it does not have much on the U.N. and other aspects more appropriate to New York. The book has three main sections, flanked by Herbert Read the 'aesthetician', and including John Macmurray on philosophy and religion. Of the three main parts, SOME SCIENTIFIC ASPECTS has Joseph Needham, biologist whose interest in China at the time was embryonic. He was more-or-less Marxist and probably was appointed as an intellectual counterweight to the Jews invading China. C H Waddington was another distinguished scientist. J D Bernal was another scientist, a physicist, though how aware he was of Jewish science fraud in not known to me. The section has J G Crowther, probably an apparatchik type: 'Head of the Science Department of the British Council and scientific correspondent of the Manchester Guardian.
      INTEGRATION OF SOCIETY is of course full of typically Jewish interests (remember, the book was written in mid-war!). We have Karl Mannheim on democratic planning', a German Jew at the London School of Economics. Thomas Balogh, at Balliol College, Oxford. A Jew from Hungary. Rather dull article including Hitler and Keynes. And Lewis Mumford, George Dickson on management—this was the era of Burnham's Managerial Revolution, discussing money and ownership and control. And F Borkenau on 'the new politics', opposing 'totalitarians' who weren't Jews. Someone called Edward Glover, of a psychoanalysis institute, looks at 'plain man' and 'commonsense'. ('Sigismund Freud' is named in the index.) The Tavistock Institute is not here; Glover seems keener on the masses than the Frankfurt School's world manipulations.
      THESE CHANGING ARTS looks at architecture, painting, literature, and music. I'd guess Miles Mathis would view all this with horror.
      There's a 12-page list of recommended books, promoted in the way Jews do. (Incidentally, A N Whitehead is include; I'd guess because he disliked Germans. Russell is barely mentioned; Power, although almost Jew-free, may have been too risky for them).

There's an interesting aspect to This Changing World, as I noted looking at the pictures. Jews, insofar as they know anything, have their own view of history, and it's to be expected that their examples and illustrations should reflect this. I noticed praise for the Medici, Spinoza, Thomas Gresham, Luther, Kant, Marx and others. Maybe they teetered on the brink of declaring Jews, perhaps for Miles Mathis to investigate later.


Association of Scientific Workers: Science and the Nation (1947; Pelican Books. Interesting part of the post-1945 Jewish victory of 1945. Anonymous book, probably to hide the Jewish names. Published by the very prolific publishers in Harmondsworth. My review includes attempts to crystallise Jews on science, claiming the were just ordinary workers, in effect contrasting with Jewish financiers and 'ideas men'.


Here are notes I made years ago, in Jew-unaware mode. I've left them unaltered. The references to China have no awareness of Jews in China.

- W H AUDEN [b 1907]
- PEARL BUCK [b. 1892; Interested in China; translated a Chinese story; 'The Good Earth' 1931 awarded a Pulitzer Prize]
- STUART CHASE [b. 1888; MIT, Harvard cum laude, class of Lippmann, John Reed etc; joined father's accountancy firm, later investigated food packaging industry [like Upton Sinclair?] and joined a labor bureau organisation]
    [Note: good attempt to examine own mental state and reactions:] '.. Perhaps as good a way as any other to formulate my living philosophy is to reconstruct some actual situations, and note how I reacted to them. .. For sixteen hours in the day, I am faced with decisions which determine my behaviour as a biological item on this planet. .. Happily, many decisions are made for me by a nervous system well adapted to defend the organism from meddling by the conscious mind. Without these sheltered reactions, I should have been dead long ago. Only this morning I escaped a nasty fall from a stone wall by unconsciously thrusting out an arm to regain balance.
Another long list of decisions is made for me by the customs and folkways of my tribe. One does not go to a dinner party in a bathing suit, hot as the evening may be. ..
.. Why do I act or react thus, rather than so? .. Let us now examine seven specific cases. [These are: Driving at night, dipping lights etc, his mental processes thinking of a car he passed omitting to dip/ Meeting a black man married to a white Russian teacher in Odessa (famous stone steps, 1904)/ Albuquerque, New Mexico; 'US Soil Conservation Service'/ Homosexual advance by man in pink shirt; he reflects that 'some borderline cases can be reversed by a good psychiatrist.'/ Hegel's definition of love; Chase rejects Hegel, crosses out his sentence about America will never tolerate fascism/ Hangs up on man offering him money to write copy advertising a worthless patent medicine/ Good description of how US depression felt to Americans in it] Summarises his cases, makes notes on dustbowls, the popular conservation theme of the time, comments on fanaticisms.
- ALBERT EINSTEIN [b. 1879]
- HAVELOCK ELLIS [1859-1939]: on other peoples', second-hand, philosophies, which he compares to wearing another man's cast-off clothing. He explains how he got this idea [from Thomas Davidson, via Percival Chubb] and how it's now common, e.g. Russell quoted, and an architect who sad undigested ideas are responsible for feeble architecture
- E M FORSTER [b. 1879]: Appearance in photo is surprisingly Hitlerian/ p 98: 'The British Parliament is often sneered at because it's a talking shop. Well, I believe in it because it is a talking shop. ... Two cheers for democracy: one because it admits variety and two because it permits criticism. Two cheers are quite enough: there is no occasion to give three. Only Love, the Beloved Republic, deserves that..'/ p 99: '.. force.. Some people idealize force and pull it into the foreground and worship it.. and I think their opposites, the mystics, err even more when they declare that force doesn't exist. .. Consider the Nibelung's Ring. [Giants, Walhalla, Fafnir, Wotan, Valkyries, Brunhilde].. Some people call its [force's] absences "decadence"; I call them "civilization"..'
- [.. science as pimp]
- J B S HALDANE [b. 1892]: 'My philosophy is the philosophy of Marx and Engels, Lenin and Stalin. It is a living philosophy all right. Millions of men and women live for it and, when the need arises, die for it. ..'
    110: '.. Hitler started dismissing my German colleagues because they happened to be Jews, Catholics, Protestants, Socialists, Liberals, or merely honest men. I had to find jobs for some of them.. .. I found myself associated with all sorts of Reds, of whom the Marxists seemed to have the best grip.. I noticed the amazingly rapid growth of corruption in England, which began to impede my scientific work. I also noticed that the British Government was systematically breaking treaties and other pledges such as the League Covenant in such a way as to help Hitler and Mussolini. In December 1936 I went to Spain to give technical advice to the Loyalists. I found that as a result of British policy, the British volunteers, armed with Canadian rifles dating from the 19th century, were facing up-to-date German tanks, that the rebel Spanish ports were becoming German naval bases, and that everything for which I had fought from 1914 to 1918, including the rights of small nations and the safety of the world for democracy, was being handed back to the German militarists. It didn't make sense. But from a Marxist angle it does make sense. So I had to take the political and economic side of Marxism seriously, including the theory that the state is at bottom a product of the class struggle, serving to keep one particular class on top. This explains why the British Empire will commit suicide, as it is now doing, rather than risk a change in its class structure. ..'
- LANCELOT HOGBEN [b. 1895. Researched into endocrinology and genetics; wrote Science For The Citizen/ Mathematics for the Million/ The Retreat From Reason/ some other books—he was an advocate of what's now called 'anti-racism', maintaining that Bantus can do differential equations, and that 'prejudice' is horrid—he has a remarkably ponderous writing style, and without checking his background seems to be a part-assimilated Jew; but this essay shows social interests, seemingly decentralization:] p 122: not unnatural .. belief that scientific knowledge makes for closer interdependence.. after steam navigation, transcontinental railways, oceanic telegraphy.. but.. p 123: The effect of scientific discovery of the last two centuries has been mainly to increase the potential of local self-sufficiency consistent with the satisfaction of fundamental human needs. .. we can.. entertain the possibility of a less centralized, and therefore less bureaucratic and less congested, type of world organization as a goal.. In Fascist states social policy is dominated by the death wish..'
    - potted look at changes in meaning of 'socialism', e.g. having a plan
- JULIAN HUXLEY [b. 1887] [His contribution seems a good example of lack of philosophical talent in a presumably-competent scientist:] 'I believe that there exists a scale or hierarchy of values, ranging from simple physical comforts up to the highest satisfactions of love, esthetic enjoyment, intellect, creative achievement, virtue. I do not believe that these are absolute, or transcendental..: they are the product of human nature interacting with the outer world. Nor do I suppose that we can grade every valuable experience into an accepted order.. But just as it can unhesitatingly be stated that there are general grades of biological organization, and that a beetle is a higher organism than a sponge, or a human being than a frog, so I can assert, with the general consensus of civilized human beings, that there is a higher value in Dante's Divine Comedy than in a popular hymn, in the scientific activity of Newton or Darwin than in solving a crossword puzzle, in the fullness of love than in sexual gratification, in selfless than in purely self-regarding activities.. I do not believe that there is any absolute of truth, beauty, morality, or virtue, whether emanating from an external power or imposed by an internal standard. But this does not drive me to the curious conclusion, fashionable.. that truth and beauty and goodness do not exist, or that there is no force or value in them. ..'
    132 ff: [Lots of stress on 'asking the right questions': Examples: How do animals inherit the results of their parents' experience? What substance is involved in burning? Who [in 'most African tribes'] caused his death, and by what form of magic? Who or what rules the universe? What is the nature of God? In each case, he says something like 'it is a waste of time and energy to devote ourselves to the problem..' although it's not clear what criteria he has, apart from the failure of people to get answers, or the eventual getting of different ones, to tell whether a question 'can never be answered'.
- SIR ARTHUR KEITH [b. 1866]: ['Researcher into the antiquity of man'; Russell said 'Social cohesion.. has a long history. You can read a good account of its origins in Sir Arthur Keith's 'New Theory of Human Evolution'. In the past, and still for most people, .. a tribal affair promoted by fear of a rival tribe..']
    144: 'No two human beings have made, or ever will make, exactly the same journey in life.'
    144: 'The Church attracts inquiring youthful minds; it offers them, or seems to offer, the most likely road to a knowledge of ultimate realities. The priest may glean the best that has been revealed or thought concerning the ways of God to man. .. The attractions of the church are of old standing, but those of science are recent. ..'
    145: 'What is true of its fingers [pattern on every baby is different] and its face is also true of its brain, but variety in this organ has an infinitely greater significance. Within the brain there are some 18,000 millions of microscopic living units or nerve cells. These units are grouped in myriads of battalions, and the battalions are linked together by a system of communication which in complexity has no parallel in any telephone network devised by man. Of the millions of nerve units in the brain not one is isolated. All are connected and take part in handling the ceaseless streams of messages which flow into the brain from eyes, ears, fingers, feet, limbs, and body. .. diversity etc.. Every child is born with a certain balance of faculties, aptitudes, inclinations, and instinctive leanings. In no two is the balance alike, and each different brain has to deal with a different tide of experience. I marvel, then, not that one man should disagree with another .. etc.. so large a measure of agreement.'
    pp 147-148: Religious upbringing in Aberdeen: 'I had no doubt that the existence of a "next world" was a well-ascertained fact. The dead whom I saw.. were.. really on their way to appear before the Great Judge for sentence. Heaven was in the glory of the clouds, and Hell lay within the flaming brimstone bowels of the earth. Both were geographical realities. I earnestly desired to gain the one and avoid the other. I was told it was easy: I had only to believe.. The Old Testament.. literally true from end to end. It was an authentic history of the world: God created the earth, Adam was the first man, and Eve the first woman. I cannot remember even questioning the justice of the sentence passed on Adam for eating the forbidden apple. ...'; Darwinism, anatomy, geology in 1880s, medical studies in Aberdeen University seem to have been his main field; no doubt his anatomical knowledge was useful in assessing how 'apelike' and 'primitive' were fossil human remains
    151: '.. explorations.. Egypt, Babylonia, and Palestine. .. on the site of Palestine archaeologists are exposing the foundations of cities which were laid many centuries before Joshua led the Israelites into the promised land. In the hills of Judaea, and particularly in those on the western shore of Lake Galilee, caves are being explored. .. carrying our knowledge of man in Palestine back to an antiquity of at least twenty thousand years. .. the men who then lived on the shores of Galilee were quite unlike any now living: .. more primitive in form and more apelike..'/ 157: '.. fossil human bones.. Mount Carmel, Palestine.. at one hundred thousand years before the time of Elijah. .. very different from any people now alive on the earth. ..'
    154: '.. orthodox creed.. shattered.. [but] if men believe.. that our earth is the only heaven, they will strive all the more to make heaven of it. To feel that we are mere birds of passage.. is not conducive to the best conduct. .. urgent craving for immortality.. which lies at the very root of the Christian religion, I look on as a sin of the flesh - one to be conquered and suppressed. It is a vice akin to avarice. With its suppression comes a peace which only those who have felt it can realise. ..'
    156: '.. only in great cities we can be intellectually and socially free; in lesser and more compact communities we are fettered by local opinion.' [He introduces this essay by 'confessing' that he is one of the herd]
    157: anthropology: Buddhist peasants in Siam who had never heard of Christ more law-abiding than 'we in Europe' contrary to what he'd been taught in Scotland/ p 157: Lives near Darwin's house at Downe in Kent/ p 158: his affection for churches and churchmen; he hopes they'll be there a thousand years hence in Kent/ p 160: 'Determinism is a criminal doctrine' - he makes choices many times a day!
- HAROLD LASKI [b. Manchester 1893]: Writes on Locke, who, he says, had plenty of practical administrative experience, which became the basis of his philosophy
    177: '.. sense that every active socialist has of being what Heine called "a soldier in the liberation war of humanity." Certain memories.. a handshake and a brief word from Arthur Henderson after the election of 1929; the eager faces of a score of miners at a day school on politics..; the set determination of a thousand trade-union officials when they decided upon the general strike in May of 1926..; the moment when, in 1934, we took over the government of London into socialist hands; or when I have sat in Madrid and heard the defenders of Spanish democracy count life as nothing beside the defence of their cause; or when, in Moscow, I heard some of the leaders of the November revolution describe the magic of that day when Lenin inaugurated the victory of the first socialist revolution in the world; ..'
- LIN YUTANG [b. 1895 Chang Chow, Fukien]: appears to be a Confucian/ p 188: Somerset Maugham play in which the wife of a missionary objecting to native practice doesn't realise her own religion is based on human sacrifice/ p 192: Mencius/ p 193: Taoism
- EMIL LUDWIG [b. Germany 1881] 'July 14'/ Goethe/ a lot of stuff about nasty Germans
- THOMAS MANN [b 1875 in Lübeck of 'a solid bourgeois family']: pp 215-216: the word religion: 'The [Latin] verb relegere or relegare from which it is thought to derive means originally in its profane sense to take care of, to pay heed, to bethink oneself. As the opposite of neglegere .. etc' [Compare simple idea that etymological root means 'to bind']
    Also on Goethe
- JACQUES MARITAIN [b. 1882, a Protestant; became a Catholic influenced by Bergson]
- JULES ROMAIN [b. 1885 'in the village of Saint-Julien Chapteuil (Haute-Loire)']
- BERTRAND RUSSELL: [Newspaper clipping: Observer January 30, 1949] Largely about the first world war, and how he had difficulty not become a complete antinomian; this phrase occurs in his autobiography too, but he expands on it here
- JOHN STRACHEY [b. 1901; cousin of Lytton Strachey]
- JAMES THURBER [b. Columbus, Ohio, 1894]
- HENDRIK WILLEM VAN LOON [b. Amsterdam 1882; went to USA at 21. Seems to have been a historian and geographer, writing about Holland's history, Rembrandt, the story of mankind and the Bible, geography, and the arts, including music.] p 306: follows Desiderius Erasmus, telling funny stories and keeping people guessing & p 314 follows Spinoza & pp 318ff imagines Kant, Voltaire, Montaigne, Erasmus, More &c plus musicians, Breughel etc/ p 306: 1939 year of disgrace.. many people in utter despair/ p 308: Nautical metaphor on steering his own little craft/ p 309: descended from rock-ribbed Calvinists who upset the mightiest totalitarian state of all times, the Church of Rome.. tolerance.. liberty.. / p 311: his family all unbelievers/ p 312: His (liberal) Lutheran dominie; ?Dutch Calvinism; 'the Heidelberg catechism'; French Huguenot church; Bavarian medieval Catholicism and University of Munich; Russia, Romanovs, Byzantine Middle Ages; Poland's persecution of Roman Catholics by Greek Catholics; Mohammed; Hinduism's 'foul perversions'; gentle Buddhism; the heathen's sticks and stones placating evil spirits; and of course a thorough training in the classics..'/ p 315: 'laughing philosopher' idea, and our modest origin, little removed from the apes..; oath of Hippocrates and knightly vows of 13th century preferable to Moses and 10 commandments; p 316 Socrates and example/ pp 317-318: Paul of Tarsus' pharisaic self-righteousness and arrogance .. explained Him to the rest of the world as he thought he ought to be explained. The simple, lovable carpenter of Nazareth.. millions of people .. very likely would have become good Christians if only Paul had let them...
- BEATRICE WEBB [b. 1858; note: Sidney Webb's described as 'lower class London Jew' by Christopher Booker]: wrote she thinks Russell told her 2+2=4 can't be proved by logic but is empirical. Margaret: "I've seen a proof.. it's very long.. you have to know a lot of set theory.."/ p 342: interesting discussion on war aims, bringing in discussion of the outcomes of earlier wars and invasions/ Mentions 'Soviet Russia, a New Civilisation' as though it's a technical document
    - interesting stuff on Boer War etc and First War
- H G WELLS [b 1866]: p.360: Perhaps a biological necessity when young to identify fiercely with ourselves../ p 363: war, economics
- REBECCA WEST: [Cicily Isabel Fairfield; b. 1892] feminist, writing on cruelty, interest in her raised by Dreyfus affair in France, and discussed dispassionately by her parents, both of whom she describes in flattering, though sexually discriminatory?, ways. She extends the argument to sexual cruelty [e.g. against unfortunate women; her argument is in effect that women have a first charge on a husband's affection and income and so are unlikely to stray]/ p 377: cruelty of the possessing classes, who in conversation, something that's recently dared to come back into print, poor need purification through misery/ p 380: Goethe's Faust, Gretchen classic example of 'fallen' or unwise woman/ p 384: cruelty to women, men pretending they're incapable, absurdity of men after World War 1 divorcing if their wives could work but not them, Balkan societies and cruelty/ General discussion on sin and idea of suffering; pleasure is a good, and rampant sex isn't in fact a danger; and can cruelty be removed?
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