My Life

My Life - Oswald Mosleya central part he was away bird-watching in Northumberland, and from my shortexperience of him I felt it was better that the birds rather than England shouldcontinue to enjoy his company. Lord Robert Cecil, however, liked him as much as hedetested Lloyd George, and did all the work while Grey watched the birds. They mayhave fixed up some act between them of Cincianatus Grey being recalled from theplough or the gulls which follow it, for the classic performance of the disinterestedfigure who has to be persuaded to return from the calm beauty of nature to the uglyturmoil of politics.The intrigues became quite febrile, and Grey was certainly aware of them. I rememberat the time a meeting being arranged in my house between Robert Cecil and ArthurHenderson to discuss a political combination under Grey for the defeat of theCoalition under Lloyd George. This meeting was of course never publicised, but themanoeuvres became well known and on one occasion were splashed in the Pressunder the headline: 'Grey Whigs on the green benches'. Henderson appearedinterested, but Lansbury and others of the Labour Left were strongly against. Cecil byhimself would have been much more generally acceptable than in the company ofGrey. It seemed to me a strange complex that he should desire the shelter of this name,for he was in every respect ten times the man Grey was, and his relatively advancedideas of social reform together with the considerable international standing acquiredby his able and ardent advocacy of the League made a far wider appeal.Lloyd George rather than Grey was the man who might have made the League workand have fulfilled all our hopes, if he had been won for the idea. I did not know him atthat time, as I never met him until after he ceased to be Prime Minister. He wasdetested by all the outstanding Conservative, Liberal and Labour supporters of theLeague, and it may well be that he felt this solid block of hatred closed to him thedoor of League policies and impelled him to his own methods in the Supreme Council,which I felt so strongly at the time were destructive. Yet he could have made theLeague work, with his dynamic energy and consummate political skill.Lloyd George evinced some emotion in domestic politics but gave scant indication ofdeep moral feeling, either in impulse or inhibition. It was this lack combined with thegeneral incompatibility of temperament which separated him from men like Cecil,whose cause might have been brought to success if they had worked together. It hasbeen one of the tragedies of our time that the good have so often been divorced fromthe dynamic. The ideal, of course, is the union of these qualities in one character, butthat is rare. The English aristocracy in this period detested Lloyd George, who intragic paradox was the only man who might have realised their fine ideals. This wastrue of all the men with whom I was then associated: the two Cecils, Henry Bentinck,Aubrey Herbert, Godfrey Locker-Lampson and, until his premature death, MarkSykes.Why did they so hate and distrust Lloyd George? His faults were obvious, and so toany insight were their origin. What did they matter in comparison with hisextraordinary capacity to get things done, if he were under the right influence, aimedin the right direction? There was no doubt of his genuine desire to build an enduringpeace, it was his methods which were in question. Yet it is surely possible inretrospect to realise a little of what he was up against, and to understand that he couldnever have achieved his results without methods somewhat foreign to their narrow122 of 424