My Life

My Life - Oswald Mosleypurpose. He would sit calmly at dinner with a false friend who he knew had recentlybeen plotting against him—even to encompass his death —if he could again be wonover and could be used for present purpose.Shaw's sensitive insight into such natures portrays this character in his fascinatingplay, which is surrealist in the true sense of the word. Caesar offers his arm toCleopatra to escort her to a dinner party, knowing that the assassin she has promptedhas already been quietly eliminated, and explains that there is no bad feeling becausethe point at which she would betray him had always been foreseen and wasconsequently forestalled. This extreme of icy, brutal but effective realism was theopposite pole to the temperament of the Cecils. They had little contact with the hardworld of action, even in its relatively gentle, modern forms. The Elizabethan forebearmust have been different, but those were rougher days.In past and present we can see how big a part is played in these grave matters by thepersonal feelings and trivial emotions of statesmen. In my view the truth probably liesbetween Marx's materialist conception of history, in which economic forces alone aredecisive, and the view that personal relations can be all-important. At this time it wascertainly true that much might have happened if Cecil's dislike of the dynamic LloydGeorge and liking for the ineffectual Grey had been reversed. These 'electiveaffinities' may be all very well in love affairs, but they are all wrong in statesmanship.Greater men, of more balanced character, further vision and firmer will would haveovercome this incompatibility of temperament and used Lloyd George's driving forcein service to their fine ideals. There have been men in history capable of this higherwisdom. The petulant passions of these nervous aristocrats divided them from all realpossibility of attainment. When they looked at Lloyd George they should haveignored small things in the high Elizabethan fashion of their own tradition, and havesaid with Carlyle in his defence of Byron and Burns: 'When the ship returns toharbour with the hull battered and the rigging torn, before we assess the blame of thepilot, before we award the Verdict of posterity, let us pause to enquire whether thevoyage has been twice round the world or to Ramsgate and the Isle of Dogs'. Theimmaculate state is easier for the sterile than for the creative.125 of 424