It Must Be Dreadful, Dr. Einstein, to Have a Great Mind and a Big Heart”

Dear Doctor,—I remember, ###although I do not expect you to have heard of it, the way in which ### first news of your world-shattering theories reached England. ### friend of mine, a sub-editor on the Sunday paper, found himself ###ed with the first story in English concerning the confirmation of your great discovery.

He put on top, "Light Caught ###ding." The headline went round the world. Strangely enough, so far in front of most of us are you that, ###we were asked to explain even today—and over thirteen years have passed since then—what it was you ### discovered, that is all that we ###d say.

Your troubles began with your great discovery. ###Your character was publicly attacked by jealous rivals. Not even Darwin was subjected to more venomous bitterness on grounds that had nothing to do with his theories.

Firstly, you were a Jew. Secondly, your theories had been supported by an expedition of English scientists. Thirdly, you won world fame as a German thinker at a time when the other scientists of Germany were ### rather poor repute in Western Europe.

Indeed, other of Germany’s natural  scientists, known for their anti-Semitism, formed themselves into a ### special society for the express purpose of refuting and confounding all you said.

So long back as thirteen years ago, ###ne disciple of learning uttered, in ###our hearing at a public discussion, ### "The proper way to deal with this ###ig of a Jew would be to get him by the throat."

"I am like a man lying in a comfortable bed but plagued with lice,"you said. You determined to leave ### Berlin. Then your enemies uttered ###a shout of triumph, saying you were ###afraid. All the time, you were not a ### German in any sense, but a Jew who ### had been born in Switzerland.

We welcomed you.

Two years after the war, Lord ###Ha#ldane’s guest here, you delivered your first lecture in England. But ### even the people who understood your ### German could not understand your science.

Then France bade you welcome. The reactionary Press attacked you ### in Paris, but in vain. Hailed abroad as the greatest man of your time, you still had to endure persecution in the land of your adoption.

Eleven years ago, after the politician, Dr. Rathenau, had been murdered, you found, when you were to lecture in Berlin, that your name was on the list of persons whose death had been decided upon by murder organizations!

Spain offered you a home. You were welcomed everywhere except in Germany.

Then began another great part of your work, efforts for peace. You tried to organize the thinkers of the world into a protest against war. At that you failed, just as all the peace lovers have failed.

You have been accused of being a Russian spy called Azeff; yes, and by a woman who tried to murder you! In fact, you have been accused of nearly everything. When you were asked about your religion and you replied, "I believe in Spinoza’s God Who reveals Himself in the orderly harmony of what exists," you incurred the anger of the orthodox.

Then Big Business got cross with you—when, knowing of the disgraceful way in which strike leaders were treated in the Southern States of America, you uttered a protest.

IT MUST BE DREADFUL TO HAVE BOTH A GREAT MIND AND A BIG HEART.

Still, peaceful though you are, you once discovered another war. "Space has now turned round and is eating up matter," you said. "Space is having its revenge."

People thought you were crazed. But I am afraid it is not you who is crazy, but the world.

To-day, like many of the best brains in the country where you lived so long, you are exiled, yes, and persecuted, even in your absence. Merely because you are a Jew, they have confiscated your banking account in Berlin, raided your home in search of arms, poor silly fools! They have forgotten…

When you first spoke on Relativity in London, in 1921, you insisted, although the war had not long been over, on speaking in German. You were warned that it might cause trouble. No, the great English people had made friends by then.

Indeed, such a tremendous ovation followed your lecture, although few, if any, could understand, that the German Ambassador thanked you, in moving words, for the great services you had rendered to Germany.

Yet now millions of Germans are told by those who have done everything to discredit Germany’s name and drag her honor in the mud that you were undermining the prestige of their country!

If Nationalism can sink to this, well, it should make us examine our own patriotism in all its forms.

In spite of your towering mentality, you are a very simple man at heart. You recently said that "the absence of free will reconciles me to the conduct of other people, even when it is painful to me."

You have even despised comfort and luxury, gone on with your anti-militarism, even when it was dangerous, professed democracy, "even though the weaknesses of democratic forms are well known to me," as you say, and realized that "social harmony and economic protection for the individual are the most important ends of communal life."

The great world of freedom-loving people honors you, Doctor, and the more today, when you are persecuted, than when your fame was being blazoned around the world.

For you belong to the breed of men—and they are rare—who use a world reputation not for selfish ends, but for the welfare, and the eventual brotherhood, of all mankind.

They can take away your bank balance. But they cannot rob you of your soul.

A being like you requires no particular country to live in. You live in the greatness of your own mind.

Hannen Swaffer,

in John Bull, London.