Why Western Australians Should Be Happy [1950]

Although this paper was published in The West Australian as “Bertrand Russell’s Impressions”, 19 Aug. 1950, p. 3 (B&R C50.31b), the principal Perth daily’s short preamble to its “exclusive” shows that Russell used the title preferred here. The article appeared the day after he returned east on an overnight flight to Melbourne and seems to have been written just prior to his departure (see 110: 2). There is little in this slight and affirmative commentary on Australia’s western-most state to distinguish it from Russell’s observations about the country as a whole, which placed similar weight on the scientific mastery of challenging environmental conditions and praise of an “expansive, energetic, and hopeful” people (111: 5). Yet Russell made no mention of such dynamic personal traits in a letter written from Perth to Elizabeth Crawshay-Williams, to whom he dismissed the inhabitants of the state capital as “very Tory and Xtian” (11 Aug. 1950, ra rec. acq. 501e).