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Correspondence from Aleister Crowley to Bertrand Russell
[undated: circa late September 1924]
Dear Sir,
A copy of your letter to Mr. Norman Mudd and one of Mrs. Clark's [Marian K. Clark] to Mr. Otto H. Kahn [Marian K. Clark to Otto Kahn - 3 September 1924] reached me by the same post.
The letter should, I trust, cover the former. Mrs. Clark was Chief Examiner of Immigration and Labour N.Y. during my stay in U.S.A.
It is perhaps little to my credit that I lived for 5 years amid that Gilbertian legislation without arrest; but I did. I was very prominent in public life all the time and after America came in, was actually working for the Dept. of Justice. (Not in a striped suit, though!)
What amazes me is that there are still men of intelligence who at least toy with the proposition "In a given newspaper article, some statement is probably approximate to some fact."
We picked out the conviction lie as the simplest to disprove: the articles are a jumble of incoherent nonsense. "So she went into the garden to cut a cabbage to make an apple pie of . . . &c—&c" is really the logical style.
As to actual evidence, the S. E. [Sunday Express], on the challenge of the pamphlet [An Open Letter to Lord Beaverbrook] have only to publish the date and place of the conviction. Which is absurd. I am asking you to take up this matter not on any ground of personal justice to me, but as a lever to overthrow the whole Babel-tower of irresponsible clamour—such as worked such mischief in the War, and is still the most evil force in modern life.
Yours very sincerely,
Aleister Crowley
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