ABSTRACT
The ending of the war enabled me to avoid several unpleasant things which would otherwise have happened to me. The military age was raised in 1918, and for the first time I became liable to military service, which I should of course have had to refuse. They called me up for medical examination, but the Government with its utmost efforts was unable to find out where I was, having forgotten that it had put me in prison. If the War had continued I should very soon have found myself in prison again as a conscientious objector. From a financial point of view also the ending of the War was very advantageous to me. While I was writing Principia Mathematica I felt justified in living on inherited money, though I did not feel justified in keeping an additional sum of capital that I inherited from my grandmother. I gave away this sum in its entirety, some to the University of Cambridge, some to Newnham College, and the rest to various educational objects. After parting with the debentures that I gave to Eliot, I was left with only about £100 a year of unearned money, which I could not get rid of as it was in my marriage settlement. This did not seem to matter, as I had become capable of earning money by my books. In prison, however, while I was allowed to write about mathematics, I was not allowed to write the sort of book by which I could make money. I should therefore have been nearly penniless when I came out but for the fact that Sanger and some other friends got up a philosophical lectureship for me in London. With the end of the War I was again able to earn money by writing, and I have never since been in serious financial difficulties except at times in America.
