My Life

My Life - Oswald Mosley7 - Youth and AgeMY first burst into full publicity occurred soon after my marriage, when I exuberantlyexploited the youth racket. It is true that I was tempted into it without quite realisingwhat I was doing, nevertheless it was a silly business, and in the present period hasbecome sillier still. I was invited to become the first president of the newly formedLeague of Youth and Social Progress. The founder was a smooth and smug littleLiberal, an agreeable and seductive fellow but typical of the middle-aged politicianswho in each generation exploit youth. They are particularly absurd when playingyoung with creaking joints, for the pretence is obvious in men who were neverathletic even in their youth. I was not called upon to revive such performances,because at twenty-three I thought for a period the war had ended all that for me. Mysimple task was to deliver the inaugural address, and after the flattering invitation tobecome its president, I felt I must do the League of Youth and Social Progress well. Injustice to my callow self I plead in mitigation that I had no idea of the publicity whichthe performance would incur.Amid the splurge of youthful demagogy one phrase in particular hit the headlines:'These old dead men with their old dead minds embalmed in the tombs of the past'. Itwas indeed silly, but at least a more striking phrase than some of the dreary dripwhich drifts at floodtide in the same direction nowadays. My entry into the House ofCommons at question time next day was assailed on all sides by lively mummiesindignantly flapping their funereal vestments. For the time being I had become highlyunpopular with everyone who had reached the years of discretion, and that meant thegreat majority. I had become a pioneer of the modern racket, a champion of all whosesole moral or intellectual asset is youth; a rapidly diminishing asset, but temporarilyprotected and privileged by dubiety when time has not yet given opportunity to proveeither capacity or incapacity.What is the truth of the matter in the light of fact and history? Is youth an advantageor a disadvantage, or neither? I should at this point, of course, declare an interest, asthey say in the House of Commons. At the time of writing these lines I am justseventy-one years of age. Yet I cannot say with Bernard Shaw: 'I am growing old andmy powers are waning, but so much the better for those who found me unbearablybrilliant when in my prime', because I am strongly conscious that my powers are notwaning but still waxing. My most competent professional advisers support me withthe information that my way of living and my family constitution should withordinary luck give me many more years at the height of my powers. Yet I do not feelthat my years separate me from youth. On the contrary my own life experience givesme the liveliest sympathy with the young. Some of my best years were wasted by theturgid suppression of elderly obscurantists who were generally proved wrong bysubsequent events. If men and women have ability it will be evident and available atan early age, and should not only be encouraged but given full scope.When Shaw wrote those ironic lines he was in process of conceiving by far the mostbrilliant and profound work of his life. Perhaps in this respect thinkers and artists areno guide to the life of action, for Goethe finished Faust II when he was over eightyand Titian was doing some of his best work at nearly ninety; Tolstoy, Balxac, Picassoand many other examples confound any claim to a monopoly of creative ability byyouth. Shaw again in his acute observation of the life of action had something108 of 424