My Life

My Life - Oswald Mosleyand invective may seem inimical to the proper effect of the more reasoned andconstructive passages in my speeches, but I had been educated in a tough school ofdebate. We shall see in the next chapter the origin of the development and ruthless useof these weapons, which alone won me a quiet hearing for my constructive argument.It was necessary by sarcasm and invective to establish among interrupters a certainfear of the retort, which was reinforced when they knew they would be selectedpersonally for some wounding comments. I was not at fault in the beginning of thissituation, for I had begun purely with the method of reason, but I was to blame in theflush of my youthful success for using these weapons too frequently and too roughlywhen I discovered their potency.Sir Philip Sassoon was one of the butts of this speech in February 1922 because hewas rather a joke among the younger generation for serving Lloyd George as PrivateSecretary in peace directly after he had served during the war in the same capacity toGeneral Haig at G.H.Q. in France. Sassoon was in many ways a most engaging andobliging fellow whose amiable idiosyncracy was to entertain the great, the bright andthe fashionable. I first saw my second wife Diana at a ball at his magnificentestablishment in Park Lane several years after this speech. She looked wonderfulamong the rose-entwined pillars of the 'voluptuous Orient' as the music of the best oforchestras was wafted together with the best of scents through air heavy laden with allSassoon's most hospitable artifices. Her starry blue eyes, golden hair and ineffableexpression of a Gothic madonna seemed remote from the occasion, but strangelyenough not entirely inappropriate.The last occasion I saw Sassoon was one evening at supper at Lady Cunard's, yearslater in the thirties. I was alone with her in the drawing-room when the Prince ofWales entered, followed by Mrs. Simpson, Mr. Simpson and Sir Philip Sassoon. Itwas a little awkward because Sassoon himself was a Jew, and I was at that timeengaged in a violent clash with certain Jewish interests. The quarrel had nothing to dowith anti-semitism, it was concerned with the possibility of a second world war if aboycott of German trade were organised. The Sassoons were not connected with theagitation, and in any case both he and I knew how to be polite on delicate occasions.The superlative manners of the Prince was unconscious of all such things.In this same speech of February 8, 1922, I baited Lloyd George for the failure of theconference at Cannes, when Briand fell from power immediately after playing golfwith the British Prime Minister. This incident illustrated one of those occasions whenEnglish and French do not well understand each other. We are accustomed to theportly figures of elderly statesmen posturing in front of photographers in a pretence toplay games at which they are obviously inept. The British may see through thepretence, but they feel it is endearing, a flattering tribute to our national idiosyncracies.The French take a sharper and more realistic view which, translated from their Latinurbanities into our Anglo-Saxon crudities, runs roughly as follows: 'We have paidthese old fools to conduct the affairs of nations, not to lose time looking silly on thegolf-links'. Briand was getting the worst of the game of golf—and of theconference—in the match with L.G. It was enough; he disappeared.I also defended Lord Robert Cecil's alliance with the former Liberal Foreign Secretary,Lord Grey of Failodon, who in private opinion I always found a singularly tediousand ineffective figure. It is true that I met him rarely; at the time he was being cast for121 of 424