My Life

My Life - Oswald Mosleydigression be some expiation for the folly of my own youth, a libation poured on thestatue of Peter Pan which was graciously and appropriately erected in KensingtonGardens at the beginning of this epoch, soon after the manly exposure of Achilles inHyde Park had been decently veiled by petition of the ladies of Mayfair.My young energies were soon given a more creative outlet by association with LordRobert Cecil. The ablest son of an outstanding Prime Minister, Lord Salisbury, heembodied the mature, experienced and traditional wisdom of statesmanship, not onlyin mind but in the physical presence of an age-old eagle whose hooded eyes broodedon the follies of men, while they still held the light of a further and beneficent vision.I was first attracted to him by my sharp difference with the government of the dayconcerning the unnecessary risking of British lives in Russia. Cecil was alsoprominent in new ideas of social and industrial reform—such as co-partnership andprofit-sharing—in which I warmly and actively supported him. Our policies in thissphere anticipated almost exactly in form and by some forty years in time proposalswhich were regarded as most revolutionary when advanced in the 1960s by theprogressive thinkers who were announced as the young lions of Liberalism.'Participation' is the latest version.Most important of all to me were Lord Robert Cecil's constructive efforts to securethe peace of Europe and of the world in his advocacy of the League of Nations; earlyin 1920 I began actively to assist him in his work. Peace was throughout myoverriding passion, and the League of Nations was the first and last effective anddisinterested effort to secure peace by comprehensive international action. It was wellconceived for that period, because the organisation consisted of similar peoplescapable of acting together and voluntarily undertaking certain obligations ofinternational law in accord with their own traditions. On the withdrawal of America itbecame in practical effect a European organisation for the maintenance of worldpeace. Finally we shall see that the League was wrecked by lack of will in statesmenrather than by defects in the machinery.The first task which began in the company of Lord Robert remained the continuingstruggle to extricate our country from Mr. Churchill's adventures. I could never becalled a pacifist, because I was ready to meet the test offered in the First World War,and later when I believed it to be necessary to meet violence with self-defence inorder to save free speech in Britain; I then organised the Blackshirt movement andachieved this object. But through my whole political life I have been strongly opposedto the sacrifice of British lives in any but a British quarrel. This attitude was clearlysummarised in two of my speeches opposing the adventure in Mesopotamia, nowcalled Iraq. They were made after Bonar Law's government was formed in 1922, bywhich time Mr. Churchill had lost his seat in Parliament; he had been the Ministerialchampion of the policy when I had opposed it in the company of Lord Robert Cecil. Istill opposed it when it was taken over by Bonar Law's government, of which LordRobert became a member in circumstances which will be explained. The personalrelations in that period were complex and variable, but my political themes wereconsistently pursued and these speeches were a typical example from a protractedcontroversy.Though as always determined to extricate our country from military commitmentswhich did not serve British or European interests, I should now take a more realistic114 of 424