My Life

My Life - Oswald Mosleypolicy these remarkable old men have all succeeded, though it should be freelyconceded that they have been greatly assisted by the young teams which they selected.The recipe of success in the modern world has been a great old man, surrounded by abrilliant young team.What of the relatively young men who in this period have arrived early in power?Two outstanding examples of completely different personalities and utterly divergentpolicies are President Kennedy and Chancellor Hitler. A study of their characters andmethods belongs to history, but few will now claim that they succeeded in terms ofachieving the aims they declared. Where is national socialism? Where is Americanpower in its own hemisphere, which rested on the Monroe doctrine? Where is the'new frontier'?—is it in Vietnam, where its author initiated large-scale militaryintervention? These lives may or may not illustrate the German proverb—he who willlive in legend, must succumb in life—but in terms of achieved aims, whether good orbad, neither of them can be compared with the older men just mentioned.What of their immediate predecessors? Churchill was given power at a later age thanthe present youth racket would admit to be proper. After all the strain of war, he wasgenerally reputed still to be going strong at eighty, and his way of life was certainlynot conducive to long physical endurance. In the First World War Clemenceauformed his war-winning government at the age of seventy-six. On the other side,Hindenburg emerged from retirement to win the decisive battle of Tannenberg whichtemporarily saved his country, and died as the venerated President of Germany at theage of eighty-eight. Where were the young men in this picture?Gladstone and Palmerston roared into their eighties in creative and dynamic policies.Lord Randolph Churchill's jibe that Gladstone was 'an old man in a hurry' turned outto be just the ineffective attempt to put a brake on age by youth which then itselffailed. Gladstone was proved right in his drive for Irish Home Rule and other reformsat the end of his life; the myopic efforts of all the younger mediocrities of Britishpolitics to frustrate him cost Britain many years of bitter strife and incurred gravedangers. It is surprising too in the nineteenth century to discover the advanced ages ofthe three chief generals in the army which took Paris from the relatively youthfulleadership of France. Louis Napoleon suffered the same defeat at the hands of age ashis famous uncle in the campaign of 1812 when he was destroyed by Kutusov, whowas almost seventy.Wellington in the statesmanship of his fashion was effective to a fine old age, at leastwith physique and faculty entirely unimpaired by a strenuous but, by the standards ofhis period, sober life. One of the most striking examples of all was provided by hismost valuable ally; Blucher at the age of seventy-three was down at the head of acavalry charge at Quatre Bras and had a division of his Prussians gallop over him,only to rise and arrive two days later at the right time on the field of Waterloo. I wasgratified to receive from Germany some friendly letters of comparison with oldBlucher, when in a well-laid trap I went down under a Red mob in a street fight at theage of sixty-six, but managed to rise and go straight to the platform to make thespeech they had intended to prevent. When we talk of the relative merits of youth andage it is well to begin with a study of the facts. Both have their uses; what we need aregood men, old and young.111 of 424