Winner to Winner: Bertrand Russell on T.S.Eliot

'One day in October 1914 I met T.S.Eliot in New Oxford Street.  I did not know he was in Europe, but found he had come to England from Berlin.  I naturally asked him what he thought of the War.  "I don't know," he replied, "I only know that I am not a pacifist."  That is to say, he considered any excuse good enough for homicide.  I became great friends with him, and subsequently with his wife, whom he married early in 1915.  As they were desperately poor, I lent them one of the two bedrooms in my flat, with the result that I saw a great deal of them.  I was fond of them both, and endeavoured to help them in their troubles until I discovered that their troubles were what they enjoyed.  I held some debentures nominally worth £3,000, in an engineering firm, which during the War naturally took to making munitions.  I was much puzzled in my conscience as to what to do with these debentures, and at last I gave them to Eliot.  Years afterwards, when the War was finished and he was no longer poor, he gave them back to me.'- The Autobiography of Bertrand Russell 1914-1944.