My Life

My Life - Oswald Mosley8 - The Irish QuestionMoral feeling is essential but emotion is disastrous in great affairs: this was the sumof my early experience. Ireland in the autumn of 1920 evoked intense moral feeling. Ifelt that the name of Britain was being disgraced, every rule of good soldierly conductdisregarded, and every decent instinct of humanity outraged. These strong feelingscan be judged on the facts presented to me at a time when I and my friends hadadvocated the granting of Home Rule to Ireland with Dominion status, and foundinstead that a special auxiliary force had been recruited, nominally to maintain order,but in reality—as we were soon convinced—to break the spirit of the Irish people bysystematic terror reinforced with full licence to commit individual crimes.Generally I had opposed government policies on practical grounds, in speeches whichboth preceded and followed this moral breaking point in 1920. My recurrent themewas that we should conserve our resources for the benefit of our own people and thedevelopment of our own country and Empire, and should refrain from extraneousadventures which exhausted our means and jeopardised those ends. This line Ifollowed consistently until it brought me to the final clash in 1939. It was in origin anessentially practical viewpoint, a pragmatic concept of the interests of my owncountry. It entered the moral sphere only when the loss of British lives was threatenedin addition to the dissipation of British substance, because this touched the deepestchord of my being after my experience of the First World War.At that time no major war was imminent, and what appeared to me as the errors ofgovernment related rather to the exhaustion of the present and the jeopardy of thefuture than to any urgent moral issues. The Versailles Treaty deeply concerned mebecause it cast the shadow of future war. However, I did not feel competent norjustified as a complete newcomer in the sphere of foreign policy to break with myparty and go into opposition on these grounds. The Versailles Treaty was certainlyone of the main motives for my subsequent decision, but at this point my actionconcerning the Treaty was negative rather than positive in that I vigorously resistedall attempts to put pressure on Lloyd George for the destruction of Europe by thepermanent pursuit of vengeance.These efforts were organised at Westminster by an almost symbolic combination ofdecadence and dishonesty, Claude Lowther and Horatio Bottomley. The former'sdelicate claim to fame was the decoration of his fine Norman castle by placing multicolouredfairy lights along its battlements and ensconcing rose-crowned cupids torelieve the severity of its internal alcoves. Bottomley was made of sterner stuff; hefinally went to gaol for swindling ex-servicemen and old women, after claiming in theSunday press that he received personal messages from Heaven. Lord Buckmaster, aformer Lord Chancellor, told me he had seen a letter to Bottomley from an exservicemandying of wounds asking to meet the author of these articles and beconsoled in his entry to the after life, which was sent on by Bottomley to a local cronymarked with the query 'Is there any money in this? H.B.' He had a demagogic successboth as a journalist and speaker which was difficult to understand. His writing wasclearly such blatant humbug that it should not have deceived a child. His style inspeaking was peculiar, rocking from foot to foot like a captive elephant in the zoowhile his hands see-sawed his spectacles in a monotonous motion, but he had acertain force of a revolting personality. He used to advocate a 'business government':126 of 424