My Life

My Life - Oswald Mosleyleader. He had no original ideas, but he would not give way on things he reallybelieved in; even if he did not see clearly he felt strongly, and that is a considerablemotive force; faith and clarity are a rare and more powerful combination.Clement Attlee succeeded Lansbury as leader of the Labour Party, and later becamePrime Minister. I never knew him well, although he was offered and accepted myoffice as Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster when I resigned. He certainly made noeffective contribution to the solution of the unemployment problem while he held thatpost, and therefore must be reckoned as content to join a government visibly breakingthe pledges on which it was elected. He was apparently employed in assistingMacDonald in other matters. Nevertheless, there was more to him than Churchill'sepigram: 'a modest little man, with plenty to be modest about'. He had a clear, incisiveand honest mind within the limits of his range, and was apparently a competentchairman of committee in preserving the balance between conflicting forces withinthe party; a quality which the Labour Party always prefers in its leader either to visionor to dynamism.Far more important than the politicians in that period were the thinkers and writers,for in that age of failure they were the seers of the future. The clear thought of one agecan and should become the action of the next. I met most of the intellectuals and knewsome of them well; foremost among them was Bernard Shaw, who entered andinfluenced my life in the twenties and thirties.Memories of him stretch from the early meetings in the Mediterranean to thememorable days at Cliveden when he was writing St. Joan, and include hisencouragement of my break with the Labour Party followed by his last-momentattempt to persuade me not to leave the party.One summer holiday when I was a young M.P., we used to meet on the sun-sweptrocks of Antibes and swim together in the Mediterranean. Cimmie and I stayed at anhotel, and Shaw with a rich man of similar opinions who owned the spacious Chateaudes Enfants, so called because he had adopted over thirty children and brought themup with a truly inspiring combination of socialist and millionaire principles. When thebus stopped at the gate of the Chateau, the conductor almost invariably observed: 'Cemonsieur a trente enfants', and the appreciative passengers with almost equalregularity responded: 'Quelle fecondite'. It was a relaxed atmosphere, but I never putthe questions to G.B.S. I would give anything to ask him now. It was probably not somuch a matter of inhibitions between generations as immaturity in my own mind; Iwas not yet ready. At the time of Shaw's centenary I wrote an essay about his study ofWagner in which I said how much I wished that in youth I had asked him all thequestions I would like to ask him now. When we met beside the Mediterranean I hadjust read his book on Wagner, which then, as now, impressed me in range andsuggestive profundity of thought as ranking next to his Methuselah. It was a muchbetter chance than previous, more formal occasions with the Webbs, or in his flat atthe Adelphi, or later at Cliveden. How often men entering the door of life must havepassed old men leaving, and have afterwards regretted they were not yet ready to talkwith them.At Cliveden he read to us each evening what he had written during the day, andanswered our admiration with the engaging deprecation that he was only acting as a187 of 424