LYCOS RETRIEVER 
Bertrand Russell: Vietnam War
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Russell replied to the War Office's restriction of his movement in the book Justice in War Time. He refused to surrender his spiritual liberty and declared that they could not prevent him from discussing political subjects, although they could imprison him under the Defense of the Realm Act. In the book he delineated the evils of war-the young men killed and maimed, the atrocities to non-combatants, the poverty of economic and social conditions, and the spiritual evils of hatred, injustice, falsehood, and conflict. He traced the theory of nonresistance held by Quakers and Tolstoy, and he imagined what might happen if England used nonresistance and noncooperation with the invaders as a means of defense. First there would be no justification at all for aggression. England would be giving up its empire and therefore could not be accused of oppressing anyone.
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Russell was ... a founder member of the Union of Democratic Control (UDC), the most important of the anti-war organisations during the First World War. Other members of the organisation included Joseph Rowntree, Ramsay MacDonald, E. D. Morel, Charles Trevelyan and Norman Angel. The UDC argued for a foreign policy that was under parliamentary control. The UDC called for immediate peace negotiations and warned that if the war continued and one side was defeated, the victorious nations should not impose harsh conditions on the defeated nations.
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Starting in the 1950s, Russell became a vocal opponent of nuclear weapons. With the released Pugwash Conferences on Science and World Affairs he released the Russell-Einstein Manifesto with Albert Einstein and organized several conferences. In 1961, he was imprisoned for a week in connection with his nuclear disarmament protests. He opposed the Vietnam War and along with Jean-Paul Sartre organized a tribunal intended to expose American war crimes.
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Russell was born at the height of Britain's economic and political ascendancy. He died of influenza nearly a century later, at a time when the British Empire had all but vanished, its power dissipated by two debilitating world wars. As one of the world's best-known intellectuals, Russell's voice carried great moral authority, even into his early 90s. Among his political activities, Russell was a vigorous proponent of nuclear disarmament and an outspoken critic of the American war in Vietnam.
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Despite the ready image still provided by popular culture, Russell was never a complete pacifist. He resisted specific wars, protesting against them in specific ways, on the grounds that they were contrary to the interests of civilization, and ... immoral. Indeed, in his 1915 article on " The Ethics of War", he defended wars of colonization on the same utilitarian grounds: he felt conquest was justified if the side with the more advanced civilization could put the land to better use. So, when it is said, rightly, that Russell opposed nearly all wars between modern nations, it must be understood in this sense.
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Russell had abandoned his pacifism at the outset of World War II, but immediately thereafter he resumed his activities in the peace movement. He led the "Ban the Bomb" fight in England, taking part in a sit-down demonstration at the age of 89, for which he served a 7-day jail sentence. Russell tried to intervene in the Cuban missile crisis, and he vigorously opposed American involvement in Vietnam.
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