My Life

My Life - Oswald Mosleyaged politicians in Britain described as young. The youth cult they have done much topromote could so easily be used against them, who have neither the athleticappearance and quality of youth nor the dynamic capacities which in history haveoften been found in old men of outstanding quality.Would Bonaparte have done better if his opportunity had come later? Would he thenhave avoided the egregious errors which destroyed him? There is much modernevidence which suggests an affirmative answer. The mysterious process of maturityappears in itself to achieve much. It is mysterious because it is indefinable; it is notjust the acquisition of experience, but rather an almost physical process like thematuring of wine. Disraeli said: 'To the creative mind experience is less than nothing'.Ideas may occur at all ages and quite independently of experience, particularly insome spheres. But is it not equally true to say that experience aids the execution ofideas?The ideal combination is clearly energy and experience. So long as men in later liferetain their energy, the addition of experience or the strange process of maturitymakes them better than when they were young; normally much better men. It is true inthis event that a 'good old 'un is better than a good young 'un'. A man may either burnout or rust at a very early age; he can burn out like Napoleon or rust out like some ofthe drift we see around today. That depends on the stress of events or the way of life.Hence the phenomenon recently observed in America, that a man may be old at fortyor be young at seventy-five; it is 'biological age', not 'chronological age' that counts.It appears that very few modern statesmen can stand the strain of high office for morethan a few years. I remember H. A. L. Fisher—then Minister of Education and laterauthor of A History of Europe—saying to me that Lloyd George was the only man heknew who could physically remain on top of the volume of business flowing throughDowning Street at the end of the First War. L.G. was an extraordinary man and heorganised his life better than most politicians. They do not understand how to liveunder strain, and have not trained themselves for their task. Their way of life ismistaken, the nation's time and their health and energies are wasted in absurdtrivialities. A man in high office should surely live like an athlete in light training, andshould be completely dedicated to his mission. If he cannot even be serious for hisfew years of supreme duty, he is a poor fish.Leaving theory to look at proved facts, at what has actually happened in the modernage, it is found that the old men have succeeded and the younger men have failed. Forexample, Chancellor Adenauer, General de Gaulle and Chairman Mao, all have incommon only the factor of success. Adenauer was elected to high office for the firsttime at nearly seventy-four, he retired at the age of eighty-eight after fourteen years ofpower during which Germany rose from the depth to the height. Two years later at theage of ninety he again decided the fate of the German government and the politicaldirection of his country. President de Gaulle at the time of writing is well advancedthrough the seventies after a period of power which has witnessed the Frenchrenaissance. Chairman Mao, also well into the seventies, at this point employs youthwithin the steel frame of a disciplined army for the fiery purpose of continuousrevolution, and exhibits an extraordinary dynamism of age which for communistbetter or human worse has passed through a test of hard experience without parallel inthe modern world. In their totally different fashions and extreme divergencies of110 of 424