Einstein on the Run Page 23
He has been accused of reckless pacifism and Communism. In that connection may I draw your attention to his recent statement where he says that he has never favoured Communism and does not favour it now? The real reason for his unpopularity with the militants in Germany is not his pacifism, which is only the abhorrence of war held by all right-thinking people, but the fact that during the late war he stood up in Germany and defended England when propaganda was launched against her.
Locker-Lampson was responding to an editorial critical of Einstein published in the conservative Daily Mail on 26 September. Headlined ‘An unwise agitation’, it attacked Einstein’s pacifist sympathies and Communist affiliations, and warned him against further annoying the Nazis: ‘We venture to put it to Dr Einstein that he would be wise to stop this injudicious agitation in this country against the Nazi regime in Germany. We have every sympathy with the German Jews as such. They are immensely to be pitied. But their treatment will not be improved by Albert Hall denunciations of the Nazis.’
A second Daily Mail editorial, ‘Meddling’, published on 2 October, the day before the Albert Hall meeting, went considerably further. ‘Tomorrow there is due to take place at the Albert Hall a mass meeting, nominally to appeal for funds on behalf of the exiles from Germany,’ it began. ‘Actually, it will everywhere be regarded as a demonstration against the Hitler regime and Nazi policy.’ About Einstein, it took note of his recent statement about Communism, and also his recent change of heart about pacifism, and implied that he was either naïve or insincere. ‘No doubt the Communists exploited what the anti-Hitler “Brown Book” has called his “Left democratic political views”, to produce the impression that he was one of themselves.’ Then the newspaper revealed its own Fascist sympathies: ‘This would explain why the German Government has intimated that it does not desire his presence on German soil. Herr Hitler will take no risks. He knows from what happened in Russia that, if the Communists seized power, there would be no limit to their violence and bloodshed in Germany.’
MASS MEETING IN LONDON ON BEHALF OF ACADEMIC REFUGEES
Evidently the meeting on 3 October, despite having been arranged in less than two weeks, was set to be controversial and well attended – as Locker-Lampson, its chief publicist (and veteran of Blue Shirts rallies at the Albert Hall), intended. But just in case there had been insufficient advance publicity, Einstein’s host may have ‘carefully leaked’ a last-minute story to Scotland Yard that an attempt might be made on his guest’s life. That is, according to Ronald Clark in his Einstein biography: an allegation for which Clark provided no definite evidence. The Scotland Yard detectives apparently received an anonymous communication of ‘a plot to assassinate Einstein’ from ‘members of the League of Gentiles against the Jewish warmongers’, the Jewish Telegraphic Agency reported.
On the evening itself, hundreds of uniformed officers from the Metropolitan Police stationed in pairs observed the area outside the hall, while plain-clothes officers hid in dark corners and mounted police waited in nearby mews and garages. Inside the hall about 1,000 students from the University of London acted as stewards, many of them in cap and gown, with an invisible reserve force of uniformed policemen in case of serious trouble. The multinational audience ranged from large numbers of Jews to a group of Blackshirts from Sir Oswald Mosley’s British Union of Fascists and a group of turbanned Indians. Every ticket-holder, before being admitted, was asked to sign a declaration: ‘I hereby undertake not to create any disturbance or in any way impede the progress and proper conduct of the meeting.’ In the comedic view of ‘Beachcomber’, writing in the Daily Express just after the packed-out meeting, ‘It is now permissible to disclose the fact that the presence of 40,000 police in the neighbourhood of the Albert Hall, on the night of Herr Einstein’s address, was fully justified.’ After all, ‘A man in the crowd was heard to say, with true British vigour and independence, that he had a good mind to write to the papers about the meeting. And a woman uttered a protest. According to police evidence, she twice cried out, “It’s a scandal!”’ That said, according to ‘Beachcomber’:
‘Science and Civilisation’. Einstein speaks to a full house at the Albert Hall, London, October 1933. Behind him is the chairman of the meeting, Lord Ernest Rutherford, and another speaker, Sir Austen Chamberlain (on the right). Outside and inside the hall (concealed from the audience) was a strong police presence in case the meeting was disrupted by British Fascists.
Nobody need have been alarmed. Behind every window in Albert Hall Mansions was a field-gun, camouflaged to look like a pot of geraniums, and two infantry battalions were in readiness in a side-turning off Exhibition Road. A Storm Platoon of Mrs Wretch’s Scarlet Shirts came from Fort Lampson, under the command of Quasi-Colonel Laski, and was hidden in the great organ during the address.
Einstein arrived in a taxi with Locker-Lampson only three minutes before the advertised starting time. His public entrance up the gangway below the organ was ‘at once dramatic and homely’, reported the Manchester Guardian, which provided this detailed, atmospheric account:
Suddenly the organ stopped in the middle of Handel’s march from Rinaldo. The grey-haired, grey-bearded Bishop of Exeter, followed by Sir James Jeans and the other speakers, made their way slowly up the gangway and took their seats on the platform. Then a pause. Mr Cooley [the official ‘chief organiser’ of the meeting, an agent of Locker-Lampson], holding back the red-plush curtain, shouted, ‘Ladies and gentleman, Lord Rutherford, and Professor Einstein,’ and then ‘Hip, hip, hooray!’ The audience rose to its feet, cheering and applauding. The organ broke out again. The arc lamps grew suddenly stronger, and then, to the accompaniment of flashes from the battery of cameramen crowding the fringes of the platform, the professor appeared – a small figure in a blue suit, his enormous head surrounded with the fluffy nimbus of grey hair, bowing, smiling, and working his graceful hands in delicate, nervous movements. The audience continued to cheer, and, standing before them, the professor continued to bow and smile and yet manage to convey an almost inexpressible sadness and pathos in his deep-brown eyes – a tiny figure against a towering background blinking at each ‘summer lightning’ flash from the cameramen.
Other well-known speakers included the economist and social reformer Sir William Beveridge, the statesman and Nobel peace laureate Sir Austen Chamberlain, the suffragist Maude Royden and, of course, the event’s éminence grise, Commander Locker-Lampson. Indeed, Einstein was the only speaker (apart from the Lord Bishop of Exeter) to be advertised without distinguishing initials after his (or her) name – presumably because he was so famous as to need no introduction. As Beveridge remarked in a live broadcast on BBC radio to a national audience that very evening while the Albert Hall meeting was still in session: ‘I had never seen him before. Einstein was a legend to me. It is like seeing Christopher Columbus or Julius Caesar.’
Rutherford spoke first, and explained that the Refugee Assistance Committee behind the meeting had recently been formed from four societies: the International Student Service, the Refugee Professionals Committee, the Germany Emergency Committee of the Society of Friends and the Academic Assistance Council, of which he was president. He then set out the purpose of the meeting in unemotional and non-political terms:
The saving of these refugee students, scholars and skilled professional workers presents great difficulties, and must be approached in no petty spirit of sectional hostility, and with a complete absence of the spirit of national antagonism.
Each of us may have his own private political views, but in this work of relief all such differences of opinion must give way before the vital necessity of effectively serving this great body of learning and skilled experience, which otherwise will be lost to the world. It is in such a spirit that the four Societies are working, and intend to continue to work together. Their sole concern is to relieve suffering, and, regardless of creed, regardless of race, and regardless of political opinion, to save these academic professional workers who are now
dependent on the charity of humanity.
I am sure that this is an appeal to which this country will generously respond.
Rutherford especially thanked ‘my friend, Professor Einstein, who has made his first public appearance tonight, to plead for help for his refugee colleagues in the hour of their distress’. His speech was followed by the bishop and then by his Cambridge scientific colleague, Jeans. Then it was Einstein’s turn, greeted with rousing applause.
With his eyes constantly looking down, Einstein read quietly from his English manuscript, ‘as unconcernedly as if lecturing in a classroom’, according to the New York Times. But he clearly had the attention of his entire audience – more than 10,000 strong – judging by the silence in the hall and the bursts of applause.
He appealed to his listeners – in his hesitant and peculiar but expressive and touching German accent (as can still be heard in a partial recording of his speech) – to give moral and financial support to the growing exodus of desperate, mainly Jewish, academic refugees from Germany. ‘It cannot be my task today to act as scourge of the conduct of a nation which for many years has considered me as their own,’ he cautiously announced, deliberately avoiding any direct mention of Germany, presumably to avoid giving the slightest impression of a political demonstration against Nazism. However, he said:
If we want to resist the powers which threaten to suppress intellectual and individual freedom we must keep clearly before us what is at stake, and what we owe to that freedom which our ancestors have won for us after hard struggles. Without such freedom, there would have been no Shakespeare, no Goethe, no Newton, no Faraday, no Pasteur and no Lister [a remark (quoted earlier) that prompted a storm of sympathetic applause]. There would be no comfortable houses for the mass of the people, no railway, no wireless, no protection against epidemics, no cheap books, no culture and no enjoyment of art for all.
Then he made a radical, idiosyncratic suggestion for encouraging scientific creativity, which perhaps only Einstein, the former patent clerk turned solitary professor, could have come up with. It was based on his recent retreat by the sea in Norfolk, he implied:
I lived in solitude in the country and noticed how the monotony of a quiet life stimulates the creative mind. There are certain callings in our modern organisation which entail such an isolated life without making a great claim on bodily and intellectual effort. I think of such occupations as the service in lighthouses and lightships. Would it not be possible to fill such places with young people who wish to think out scientific problems, especially of a mathematical or philosophical nature? . . . The young scientist who carries on an ordinary practical profession which maintains him is in a much better position – assuming, of course, that this profession leaves him with sufficient spare time and energy. In this way, perhaps a greater number of creative individuals could be given an opportunity for mental development than is possible at present. In these times of economic depression and political upheaval such considerations seem to be worth attention.
This last remark was a tactful and prescient hint that many Jewish academic refugees from Germany might have to adopt new livelihoods, rather than expecting to find equivalent university positions abroad. As Einstein put this in a subsequent statement to the World Union of Jewish Students (of which he was honorary president) before he left London: ‘In these difficult times we must explore every possibility of adjusting ourselves to practical needs, without thereby surrendering our love for the things of the spirit or the right to pursue our studies.’
Einstein’s lighthouse-keeper suggestion was mostly greeted with enchanted mirth in Britain (though it impressed the politician Hoare as an ‘imaginative proposal’). A Daily Express cartoonist, in a cartoon entitled ‘Stormy Weather’, depicted a wild-haired ‘Lighthouse Keeper Professor Stan Baldstein’ perched alone in his electrically radiant lighthouse, holding a humble candle. A former lighthouse-keeper pointed out in the Manchester Guardian that a keeper was legally forbidden to read while on watch, and that a certain clockwork arrangement had to be wound every half-hour, to keep the bell ringing and the light automatically clicking on and off – which would surely inhibit intellectual reflection. As for scientists, both in Einstein’s day and also nowadays, most of them tend to regard collaboration, rather than isolation, as the key to having good ideas. His own collaborator, Leopold Infeld, commented: ‘For him loneliness, life in a lighthouse, would be most stimulating, would free him from so many of the duties which he hates. In fact it would be for him the ideal life. But nearly every scientist thinks just the opposite.’ Perhaps Einstein’s friend, Born, should have the last word on this subject:
‘Stormy Weather’. This cartoon by Sidney ‘George’ Strube appeared in the Daily Express in October 1933. It was inspired by a remark about lighthouse-keepers in Einstein’s speech at the Albert Hall.
Einstein expressed over and over again the thought that one should not couple the quest for knowledge with a bread-and-butter profession, but that research should be done as a private spare-time occupation. . . . What he did not consider, however, was the organisational rigidity of almost all professions, and the importance which individual members of a profession attach to their work. No professional pride could develop without it. To be able successfully to practise science as a hobby, one has to be an Einstein.
DEPARTURE FOR AMERICA
The three clear days after the meeting before his departure for the United States on 7 October were somewhat clouded by difficulties with Locker-Lampson and Lindemann, Einstein’s two, very disparate, hosts in England. By the end of his stay in Norfolk, Locker-Lampson’s personal ‘Ether-Atmosphere’ must sometimes have struck Einstein more as German Zwang – coercion – than English freedom. For example, his English host had the habit in Norfolk of opening his guest’s letters, including even letters from Einstein’s wife: a fact revealed by Einstein to Yahuda (as mentioned in a shocked letter to Einstein from Yahuda’s wife after he had left England). ‘Black Swan’ Locker-Lampson, whom Einstein had lauded to his wife Elsa for his lack of egoism back in late July, had become something like Black (or Blue) Shirt Locker-Lampson by early October. He would now try to manipulate Lindemann, too.
On 4 October, Lindemann (who had missed the Albert Hall meeting) drove from Oxford to London, where he telephoned Locker-Lampson and expressed a wish to meet Einstein on the following day – presumably to discuss the latter’s future relationship with Oxford physics. What happened next is not clear, but no meeting took place on 5 October. Later that day, Einstein wrote a friendly letter to Lindemann: ‘I heard that you called me and hoped to see you today. But I did not hear anything, and I suppose you are back in Oxford.’ Having congratulated Lindemann on his successfully helping so many refugee physicist colleagues, Einstein looked forward to ‘a happy reunion’ with Lindemann. But in fact the two of them would never meet again. No doubt Lindemann thought that Locker-Lampson deliberately engineered the botched meeting with Einstein in London. In years to come, Lindemann apparently claimed, according to Christ Church legend, that ‘Locker-Lampson frightened Einstein from Europe’.
Supporting evidence for Locker-Lampson’s somewhat autocratic behaviour at this time comes from his handling of the funds raised by the London meeting. He and his organiser, Charles Cooley, handed over £3,000 (including a single donation of £1,000) to the Refugee Assistance Committee, yet retained considerable, undeclared funds for their own purposes – including, it would appear, the rapid publication of an illustrated ‘souvenir’ booklet of the meeting, prominently featuring Locker-Lampson. A worried letter to Beveridge from Walter Adams (who had visited Roughton Heath in mid-September), remarked on 18 December:
Mr Sieff, who was acting as treasurer when the matter was being discussed, agreed it would be wiser not to press for a detailed account, capable of audit, but to treat the payment as a block grant to the fund. Commander Locker-Lampson feels that he was responsible for the meeting and, therefore, for the funds collected and seems
to prefer to keep a balance as a fund for further campaign expenses. The irregularity of this position has caused a great deal of irritation and distress and the whole question of the Einstein accounts must be settled if further paralysing delays are to be avoided.
In response, Beveridge told the treasurer on 20 December: ‘An amicable settlement is highly preferable to any open rupture. The object of all parties to this unfortunate misunderstanding is the common service of humanity.’
Certainly there is no record of any fond farewell between the commander and the professor as he left London for America. A draft chapter of Locker-Lampson’s unpublished memoirs claimed that one of the commander’s lady secretaries (who had helped to look after Einstein in Norfolk) drove Einstein by car from London to Southampton and saw him off to America: a forlorn figure to the very end. But this ultimate moment of departure appears to be pure Locker-Lampson fantasy – reminiscent of his supposed first meeting with Einstein in Oxford back in 1921. According to contemporary newspaper reports, an unaccompanied Einstein took the boat train from London to Southampton on 7 October, where, under security, he boarded the liner for New York coming from Antwerp with his wife, his secretary Helen Dukas, and his calculator Walther Mayer on board. In a very brief press statement at a Southampton hotel, a business-like Einstein refused to be interviewed and announced simply: ‘I am going to visit Princeton University to carry out a series of scientific investigations. I shall be away for six months. Beyond that I am not making plans at present.’
Science is not and never will be a closed book. Every important advance brings new questions. Every development reveals, in the long run, new and deeper difficulties.