Editing Bertrand Russell (section)

===First World War===
[[File:National Committee of the No-Conscription Fellowship May 1916.gif|thumb|right|Russell served on the National Committee of the [[No-Conscription Fellowship]], shown here in May 1916 (''back right'').<ref>{{Citation |last=Cyril Pearce |title='Typical' Conscientious Objectors — A Better Class of Conscience? No-Conscription Fellowship image management and the Manchester contribution 1916–1918 |work=Manchester Region History Review |volume=17 |issue=1 |page=38 |year=2004}}</ref>]]
During [[World War I]], Russell was one of the few people to engage in active [[opposition to World War I|pacifist activities]]. In 1916, due to his absence of allegiance to the war effort, he was dismissed from Trinity College following his conviction under the [[Defence of the Realm Act 1914]].<ref>{{Cite news |last=Hochschild |first=Adam |year=2011 |title=I Tried to Stop the Bloody Thing |work=The American Scholar |url=http://www.theamericanscholar.org/i-tried-to-stop-the-bloody-thing/ |access-date=10 May 2011 |archive-date=17 March 2011 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110317162326/http://www.theamericanscholar.org/i-tried-to-stop-the-bloody-thing/ |url-status=live }}</ref> He later described this, in ''[[Free Thought and Official Propaganda]]'', as an illegitimate means the state used to violate freedom of expression. Russell championed the case of [[Eric Chappelow]], a poet jailed and abused as a conscientious objector.<ref name="Moorehead">[[Caroline Moorehead]], ''Bertrand Russell: A Life'' (1992), p. 247.</ref> Russell played a part in the ''Leeds Convention'' in June 1917, a historic event which saw well over a thousand "anti-war socialists" gather; many being delegates from the [[Independent Labour Party]] and the Socialist Party, united in their pacifist beliefs and advocating a peace settlement.<ref>{{Cite web |last=Scharfenburger |first=Paul |date=17 October 2012 |title=1917 |url=http://musicandhistory.com/music-and-history-by-the-year/178-1917.html |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120117062625/http://musicandhistory.com/music-and-history-by-the-year/178-1917.html |archive-date=17 January 2012 |access-date=7 January 2014 |website=MusicandHistory.com}}</ref> The international press reported that Russell appeared with a number of Labour [[Member of Parliament (United Kingdom)|Members of Parliament]] (MPs), including [[Ramsay MacDonald]] and [[Philip Snowden]], as well as former [[Liberal Party (UK)|Liberal]] MP and anti-conscription campaigner, Professor [[Arnold Lupton]]. After the event, Russell told Lady Ottoline Morrell that, "to my surprise, when I got up to speak, I was given the greatest ovation that was possible to give anybody".<ref>{{Cite book |last=Russell |first=Bertrand |title=Pacifism and Revolution |publisher=Routledge |year=1995 |page=xxxiv |chapter=A Summer of Hope}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web |date=5 June 1917 |title=British Socialists – Peace Terms Discussed |url=http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article15731745 |access-date=7 January 2014 |website=The Sydney Morning Herald |archive-date=10 September 2024 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240910140359/https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/15731745 |url-status=live }}</ref>

His conviction in 1916 resulted in Russell being fined £100 ({{Inflation|UK|100|1917|fmt=eq|r=-2|cursign=£}}), which he refused to pay in the hope that he would be sent to prison, but his books were sold at auction to raise the money. The books were bought by friends; he later treasured his copy of the [[King James Version|King James Bible]] that was stamped "Confiscated by Cambridge Police".

A later conviction for publicly lecturing against inviting the United States to enter the war on the United Kingdom's side resulted in six months' imprisonment in [[HM Prison Brixton|Brixton Prison]] (see ''[[Bertrand Russell's political views]]'') in 1918 (he was prosecuted under the [[Defence of the Realm Act]]<ref>{{Cite web |url=https://russell-letters.mcmaster.ca/background |title=The Brixton Letters |access-date=24 November 2023 |archive-date=10 September 2024 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240910144113/https://russell-letters.mcmaster.ca/background |url-status=live }}</ref>)<ref name="Pacifist">{{Cite book |last=Vellacott |first=Jo |title=Bertrand Russell and the Pacifists in the First World War |publisher=Harvester Press |year=1980 |isbn=0-85527-454-9 |location=Brighton}}</ref> He later said of his imprisonment:

{{blockquote|I found prison in many ways quite agreeable. I had no engagements, no difficult decisions to make, no fear of callers, no interruptions to my work. I read enormously; I wrote a book, "Introduction to Mathematical Philosophy"... and began the work for "The Analysis of Mind". I was rather interested in my fellow-prisoners, who seemed to me in no way morally inferior to the rest of the population, though they were on the whole slightly below the usual level of intelligence as was shown by their having been caught.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Bertrand Russell |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=SlMrmmrNuEoC |title=Autobiography |publisher=Psychology Press |year=1998 |isbn=978-0-415-18985-9 |page=256 |chapter=8: The First War |access-date=7 January 2016 |archive-date=10 September 2024 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240910140331/https://books.google.com/books?id=SlMrmmrNuEoC |url-status=live }}</ref>}}

While he was reading [[Lytton Strachey|Strachey]]'s ''[[Eminent Victorians]]'' chapter about [[Charles George Gordon|Gordon]] he laughed out loud in his cell prompting the warder to intervene and reminding him that "prison was a place of punishment".<ref>''The Selected Letters of Bertrand Russell'' by Bertrand Russell, [[Nicholas Griffin (philosopher)|Nicholas Griffin]] 2002, letter to Gladys Rinder in May 1918</ref>

Russell was reinstated to Trinity in 1919, resigned in 1920, was Tarner Lecturer in 1926 and became a Fellow again in 1944 until 1949.<ref>{{Cite web |title=Trinity in Literature |work=Trinity College Cambridge |url=https://www.trin.cam.ac.uk/about/historical-overview/trinity-in-literature/ |access-date=3 August 2017 |publisher=Trinity College |archive-date=10 September 2024 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240910140518/https://www.trin.cam.ac.uk/about/historical-overview/trinity-in-literature/ |url-status=live }}</ref>

In 1924, Russell again gained press attention when attending a "banquet" in the [[House of Commons of the United Kingdom|House of Commons]] with well-known campaigners, including [[Arnold Lupton]], who had been an [[Member of Parliament (United Kingdom)|MP]] and had also endured imprisonment for "passive resistance to military or naval service".<ref>{{Cite news |date=8 January 1924 |title=M. P.'s Who Have Been in Jail To Hold Banquet |work=The Reading Eagle |url=https://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1955&dat=19240108&id=G28rAAAAIBAJ&pg=3245,1355607 |access-date=18 May 2014 |archive-date=1 March 2021 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210301052221/https://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1955&dat=19240108&id=G28rAAAAIBAJ&pg=3245,1355607 |url-status=live }}</ref>