Nine printed letters signed expressing support to Edvard Benes

BENES, Eduard

Nine printed letters signed, each one page, folio 340mm by 220mm. Individually signed by Laurence Binyon, William Henry Bragg, Beatrice and Sidney Webb, Arthur Evans, Herbert Albert Laurens Fisher, John Maynard Keynes, George Edward Moore, Charles Morgan and Dugald Sutherland MacColl. Edvard Benes who served as the president of Czechoslovakia from 1935 to 1938, and again from 1939 to 1948. During the first six years of his second stint, he led the Czechoslovak government-in-exile during World War II. In 1938 he resigned after the Munich Agreement. The text of each letter reading in part "We think it might be timely that a few English students and writers should send you an expression of their sympathy and of their great admiration for your work and your character. In succession to Thomas Garrigue Masaryk, your master and co-founder of your State, you have been, through good times and evil, the authentic voice of Czechoslovakia. We appreciate the steadfastness and dignity of your bearing in the face of national calamity, and also of personal misrepresentation. We have faith that the nation which bred Huss and Comenius and which has preserved its courage, its language and its culture through so many centuries will continue to do so through all vicissitudes. Its literary and artistic renaissance of the last hundred years is rooted in that tradition; and has produced, and is producing, many powerful and brilliant minds. You, like Masaryk, have fostered this movement, which is of a kind that no political changes can extinguish. Though your place of honour in European history is already secure, it is impossible to think that your service to your country is at an end". The letter signed by MacColl has been heavily amended by George Bernard Shaw, with paragraphs being deleted and with an handwritten addition signed and dated "G.Bernard Shaw, 4/11/38" reading "I should like to join in any reasonable greeting to Benes. But this is damned nonsense, as Hitler as pointed out. Masaryk was a Slovene, not a Czech. There is no such thing as a Czechoslovakian nation; and Benes has about as much to do with Hus (not Huss) and Comenius as I do with Brian Boru. Why not cut out this literary guff, which will take all real meaning out of the salutation for Benes?". In addition there is a typed letter signed by Philip Wilson Steer, of identical content, and handwritten accompanying note. Fine.

Two Autograph Letters signed by Robin Gandy to Donald Bayley following the Death of Alan Turing

TURING, Alan

Two Autograph Letters signed by Robin Gandy to Donald Bayley. First letter, four pages 8vo and two pages 4to, University College, Leicester, "Wednesday" [16, 23 or 30 June 1954]. Written shortly after Turing's death, expressing Gandy's shock at the news and his belief that it was probably accidental ("...I stayed with him the previous week and so feel fairly sure that there was no new particular trouble..."), going onto describe various chemical experiments Turing was undertaking at home ("...a typical expression of Alan's desire to make things for himself. When I was there he had made some quite respectable caustic soda... Also I noticed among the bottles of bought chemicals that there was some potassium cyanide..."), and giving three possible explanations for his state of mind ("...1. That he had determined to pretty well give up sex... 2. He was beginning to be disappointed by the lack of clear cut results from the analysis... 3. Perhaps an effect of the psychoanalysis was to bring on an irrational despair..."), ending by notifying him of Turing's bequests ("...I inherit his books and manuscripts..."), hoping to find someone to prepare Turing's work on fir cones for publication and asking him if there are "...any books or things you would like...". Second letter one page 4to" [16, 23 or 30 June 1954]; written in faded red ink, thanking him for his letter of October and enclosing "the bible" [not present here], mentioning "...I have passed on your version of the invention of 'ACE' to Newman so my myth won't be repeated in the Royal Society obituary!..." In these recently discovered and unpublished letters, Robin Gandy (1919-1995), Turing's great friend, colleague and executor, writes in response to a letter from Donald Bayley, written on 14 June 1954, just one week after Alan Turing was found dead, seemingly from suicide by cyanide poisoning. Gandy's letter reflects the bewilderment and shock experienced by those who knew Turing best. The inquest into Turing's death found for the verdict of suicide, citing as indicators that Turing had recently drawn up a will and had also been undertaking experiments to manufacture cyanide. A newspaper report of their findings is included. Gandy's opinion on the verdict is less clear cut ("...I can't say this couldn't be so, though I rather doubt it..."), something which chimes with the opinion of his close friends and his mother, Sara, who was convinced the death was accidental, but nevertheless accepted the verdict. Gandy had spent a happy weekend with Turing just the week before, and he found Turing's mental health much improved, especially since attending sessions with his psychoanalyst Franz Greenbaum ("...he found it increasingly easy to recount – with much humorous detail – his sagas. In fact he struck me as rather more settled than usual..."). Gandy does, however, offer three possible reasons for a disturbed state of mind, despite Turing being at a high point in his career. Bayley and Gandy had become lifelong friends whilst working with Alan Turing at Hanslope Park during the war. Gandy shared a cottage with Turing and the three men spent VE Day together. Bayley's letter to Gandy, which prompted this reply, is held in the Turing Archive at King's College, Cambridge (AMT/A/5). In it he asks Gandy for his thoughts on what might have happened: '...I thought at first he was in trouble again...' Bayley writes, '...Even if so, he knew we would support him as we had before. It's a complete mystery to me because he did enjoy life so much – apart from that one aspect...', going on to say that although he hadn't seen Turing since the previous October, when they had spent a weekend together in Wilmslow, they had exchanged Christmas cards ('... I thought of him a lot and I shall miss him terribly...'). Gandy's reference to "the bible" could possibly refer to Turing's copy of Jahnke and Emde's Tables of Functions, which Bayley had chosen as a keepsake from Turing's effects. Donald Bayley (1921-2020), electrical engineer and collaborator of Alan Turing during the Second World War on the 'Delilah' project, a functioning portable speech-encryption system.

Autograph manuscript signed: The economic future of Palestine

LASKI, Harold

Autograph manuscript signed; 4to; 16 pages. In this essay Harold Laski discusses the economic future of Palestine and of the Jews immigrating there following World War II. Laski was one of the most influential public intellectuals of the 20th century, a prolific author, professor at the London School of Economics, and leading advisor to the post war Labour governmen. Though normally regarded as a political theorist, Laski frequently wrote on the problems of international politics. Son of a Jewish cotton merchant in Manchester, he renounced his faith as a young man, but he developed close ties with leading Jewish figures on both sides of the Atlantic. At the Paris Peace Conference, following the Great War, Laski advised Felix Frankfurter who was in attendance as an observer for American Zionist interests. Frankfurter, with T.E. Lawrence, convinced Emir Faisal to sign the Faisal-Weizmann Agreement to create a workable co-existence between Palestine's Arab and Jewish populations as envisioned under the 1917 Balfour Declaration. Laski grew increasingly interested in Zionism. He declared his dedication to the cause in 1945, stating that he felt "like a prodigal son returning home." For Laski, the Jewish settlement of Palestine became, "a veritable crusade which obsessed" him (Kramnick and Sheerman, Harold Laski, A Life on the Left). This current esay presents Laski's views on the economic future of Palestine and the prospects for Jewish-Arab relations there. It was published in Palestine's Economic Future, ed. J. B. Hobman, introduction by Chaim Weizmann (London, 1946). Laski argues that the immigration of Jews to the region has had considerable economic benefits for Arabs and that "before 1917, Palestine, in an economic sense was a land without hope or prospects." He then describes at length the economic impact of the Jewish presence in Palestine and its neighbors. Laski makes a series of proposals for economic development involving public works and infrastructure, finance and taxation, education, government, and more. The essay also includes an extensive discussion of the history of British commitment to the establishment of a homeland for Jews in Palestine and a discussion of the demographics of immigrants.
He concludes "The economic future of Palestine is an issue dependent, at every point, upon political decisions which will have to be made within a very brief period … There is one principle I can at least affirm which is relevant to all the political decisions which lie immediately ahead. There is no evidence to show that the attempt to make Palestine a 'Jewish National Home' upon the basis of the Balfour Declaration has had any deleterious effect on Arab well-being; on the contrary, it is abundantly clear that it has helped, and not hindered, Arab advance. To this must be added two other things. In an experiment of the scale and importance of that attempted in Palestine, success largely depends upon faith in its validity in the major officials concerned …"The second thing to note is that the implication of a 'Jewish National Home' in Palestine is a thorough-going reorganization of the internal relations of a semi-feudal Arab society in which the privileges of a small group of rich effendi are deeply involved; and this, in its turn, is bound, if it continues, to have vital repercussions on the whole social framework of the Middle East. This is the real source of the resistance to large-scale Jewish immigration. The Jew brings with him Western ideas, often Western socialist ideas, which cut right across a traditional historical pattern the beneficiaries of which seek at any cost to defend their claims. They, therefore, mobilize, both religious fanaticism and national passions to arrest changes in which they see the threat to their privilege, and seek to use the dislike of the masses to change before they see that the change is to their advantage …"If the Palestine experiment could have any chance of success in the next decade, it must be made decisively clear that there is no going back at any point from the full implementation of the principles set out in the Mandate of 1922. Novelty in the field of politics demands not less the courageous heart than the clear mind. In the quarter of a century since the Balfour Declaration the policy of Great Britain in Palestine has had neither. Until it has come to see that, without these qualities, it only deepens one of the supreme historical tragedies of which we had knowledge, its statesmen do an ill-service to civilization by accepting responsibilities they hesitate to fulfill. And at a time like our own, to fail in a task of this kind is to risk a betrayal the future will find it impossible to forgive." Near fine with a little light browning.