Dear Professor Freud:

It is admirable how the yearning to perceive the truth has overcome every other yearning in you. You have shown with impelling lucidity how inseparably the combative and destructive instincts are bound up in the human psyche with those of love and life. But at the same time there shines through the cogent logic of your arguments a deep longing for the great goal of internal and external liberation of mankind from war. This great aim has been professed by all those who have been venerated as moral and spiritual leaders beyond the limits of their own time and country without exception, from Jesus Christ to Goethe and Kant. Is it not significant that such men have been universally accepted as leaders, even though their efforts to mold the course of human affairs were attended with but small success?
I am convinced that the great men, those whose achievements in howsoever restricted a sphere set them above their fellows, share to an overwhelming extent the same ideal. But they have little influence on the course of political events. It almost looks as if this domain on which the fate of nations depends has inescapably to be given over to the violence and irresponsibility of political rulers.
Political leaders or governments owe their position partly to force and partly to popular election. They cannot be regarded as representative of the best elements, morally or intellectually, in their respective nations. The
intellectual elite have no direct influence on the history of nations in these days; their lack of
cohesion prevents them from taking a direct part in the solution of contemporary problems. Don't you think that a change might be brought about in this respect by a free association of people whose previous achievements and actions constitute a guarantee of their ability and purity of aim? This association of an international nature, whose members would need to keep in touch with each other by a constant interchange of opinions, might, by defining its altitude in the Press-responsibility always resting with the signatories on any given occasion - acquire a considerable and salutary moral influence over the settlement of political questions. Such an association would, of course, be a prey to all the ills which so often lead to degeneration
in learned societies, dangers which are inseparably hound up with the imperfections of human nature. But should not an effort in this direction be risked in spite of this? I look upon such an attempt as nothing less than an imperative duty.
If an intellectual association of standing, such as I have described, could be formed, it would also have to make a consistent effort to mobilize the religious organizations for the fight against war. It would give countenance to many whose good intentions are paralyzed today by a melancholy resignation. Finally, I believe that an association formed of persons such as I have described, each highly esteemed in his own line, would he well suited to give valuable moral support to those elements in the League of Nations which are really working toward the great objective for which that institution exists.
I had rather put these proposals to you than to anyone else in the world, because you, least of all men, are the dupe of your desires and because your critical judgment is supported by a most grave sense of responsibility.

A private letter written around 1931. Published in Mein Weltbild, Amsterdam: Querida Verlag, 1934.
Source: Ideas and Opinions by Albert Einstein, based on Mein Weltbild published by Querido Verlag and on other sources, translated and revised by Sonja Bargmann, Crown Publishers, Inc.