My Life

My Life - Oswald Mosleyview of oil necessities than I did then. It would in any case have been wiser to havedeveloped the oil which was subsequently discovered in our own Empire, of whichthe geological survey had still been neglected even by 1939. My main charge againstgovernment in this period was that they were always running round the world lookingafter the business of every people except their own. When they finally woke to theimportance of the British Empire which could have supplied all their needs withforethought and plan, they threw it away as a present to anarchy in a panic at theweakness to which their extraneous errors had reduced our country. My speeches atleast attempted to call a halt to these adventures and to concentrate attention on theinterests of our own people.Speaking on February 15, 1923, I referred to our position in Iraq and observed that'the matter has been flung, as all difficult and insoluble problems are flung, to theLeague of Nations. It is curious that the League of Nations is never invoked to stopthe favourite wars of statesmen; it is only invoked to stop those wars of which theyare getting rather tired.' I then developed one of my main themes, that if we allowedthe matter to drift on we should be faced with the alternative of fighting a disastrouswar, entailing immense expenditure in lives and money, or of withdrawing with graveloss of prestige.I often reverted in later years to the argument that it was foolish to scatter universalpledges of support, and dishonourable then to honour only those which suited our owninterest: the principle of a selective honouring of binding pledges. Many years later inthe much larger sphere of the 1939 war with Germany I stated exactly the sameprinciple and made the same charge: our statesmen had gone to war with Germanyand sacrificed many lives to honour a pledge foolishly given to Poland, while laterthey sat back supinely while Russia permanently subjugated Poland. This tragedycould arise again in our time if we were called upon to fight a world war in support ofpledges lightly given in Asia, which I have opposed for the same reasons in recentyears.When taunted in 1923 with advocating scuttle I retorted that recent experience hadshown everyone was in favour of scuttle in the end. The question was when to scuttle,before or after the row began. There was nothing so detrimental to national prestige asbeing full of bluff and bluster until you got into a difficulty and then quietly climbingdown. 'It is possible to walk downstairs with some grace and dignity of one's own freewill, but it is impossible to be kicked downstairs with grace or dignity.' In the presentrecurrence of history these remarks apply to our situation East of Suez today.I then drew attention to warnings from soldiers as eminent as Sir Henry Wilson andGeneral Robertson and reminded the House of 'the fate of those Empires which haveendeavoured in the past to maintain enormous commitments in far-flung territorieswith inadequate force'. Our 'small and scattered forces in Iraq and throughout theworld' were endangered by this policy and our home defence was jeopardised by theabsence in Iraq of essential air squadrons. We were taking 'the gravest risk in thismatter of our air defence' and in addition were squandering resources in these remoteadventures which were urgently needed for education, health and housing at home.I denounced statesmen 'whose eyes are averted from the destruction which theirblunders since the war have caused in their own country, who can regard with tranquil115 of 424