My Life

My Life - Oswald MosleyOswald Mosley, Cynthia, and F.D.Roosevelt - 1926We naturally discussed politics much at this time, as well as later on the trip. In fact,he was interested in nothing else. He was thoroughly a liberal in the best sense of theword. He had compassion, the first requisite in a statesman of any opinion, he reallycared about people and human suffering. He also had a deep respect for the individualand for liberty; another essential. In all these matters he was sensitive, even emotional.Yet this seemed to be about the limit of his political range; he had scarcely an inklingof the turmoil of creative thinking then beginning in America, which I discussed laterin the technical sphere of money with the officials of the newly-formed FederalReserve Board, and in the industrial regions with the vastly paid technicians of themass-producing plants who already foresaw a productive potential which wouldeventually confront statesmanship with a problem to overwhelm all previouseconomic thinking. He was aware these things were happening, but his mind did notgrapple with them. He was remote from the fascination of these problems.Roosevelt was executive not constructive. Already this was clear to any discerningeye, for his vigour of character inevitably made him executive, but his limitations ofmind with equal inevitability prevented him being constructive. He was an example oftoo much will and too little intellect; usually English politicians of any capacityreverse these qualities to make the opposite defect. It was easy to see that he wouldact rapidly and ruthlessly in an emergency. He had been an ardent under-secretary ofthe Navy and had participated to the full in its life. His family background alsoprovided dynamic impulse and tradition; he had the right blend for action. I felt astrong sympathy with him in these qualities and with his urge to remedy humansuffering. Recently an English journalist has written: 'It is no accident that it was anauthoritarian aristocrat, Bismarck, who gave Germany its great socialistic InsuranceActs; Roosevelt, the authoritarian American aristocrat, who gave America its radicalNew Deal; and Sir Oswald Mosley, the authoritarian British aristocrat, then a LabourMinister, who was prepared to solve unemployment in the 1930s along genuinelysocialist lines'.164 of 424