My Life

My Life - Oswald MosleySuch stories are really no subject for laughter, because this pathos of the wreckage ofPuritanism has become the tragedy of England today. I do not desire to tell them,because my only purpose is to draw the lesson, not to rule out a Lloyd George infavour of either a MacDonald or the immaculate Baldwin.No doubt one of the main features in the exclusion of Lloyd George was the dislike of'the goodies' in the Conservative and Liberal Parties for his free way of living, thoughhis private life should have been irrelevant to his public career. His love affairs havebeen so widely publicised by others that it can now do him no harm to discuss thesubject. My only contact with this aspect of his nature was when Lloyd George gave adinner in a private room in a good and most respectable hotel long since pulled down.I arrived first and he showed me the list of guests, which not only included politicianssupposed to be at some enmity with each other, but also names drawn from verydifferent spheres. I said: 'This will lift the roof if it gets out'. Lloyd George repliedwith his ineffable dimpling expression: 'My dear boy, if everything I have done in thishotel during the last forty years had got out, you have no idea how many times Iwould have had to retire from polities'. Entire absence of humbug was part of hischarm to the younger generation; it has been a common feature of the few really greatmen I have known.He said to me once: 'Love is all right, if you lose no time'. I understood it was alwayshis practice to go straight to the point and to press for a decision one way or the other.He did not, of course, go so far as Bonaparte in the celebrated story of a lady arrivingto meet him during a Council meeting which began quietly but became difficult andincreasingly engaged his passionate energy. The A.D.C. is reported to have whisperedin his ear, 'Madame est arrivee'; Napoleon, 'Que Madame attende'; A.D.C., 'Madameattende'; Napoleon, 'Que Madame se deshabille'; A.D.C., 'Madame est deshabillee';Napoleon, 'Que Madame se couche'; A.D.C. 'Madame est couchee'; Napoleon, 'QueMadame s'en aille'. Such methods may save time, but they scarcely savour the subtlermoments of romance.Some of the great masters of action gave more time to this art, and can consequentlybe charged with some loss of time, but their balanced characters were devoid ofhysteria. There is a note of reproach in one phrase of Mommsen which can be foundin his great passage on Julius Caesar beginning: 'It is not often given to mortals tocontemplate perfection'. The sentence in my translation runs: 'It was not until he hadpassed the meridian of his years and the torrent of his passions had subsided that thisremarkable man attained the acme of his powers as the instrument of action and ofdestiny'. His experiences in early life certainly gave him more practice in handling allsituations, both delicate and dangerous, than had the less fortunate MacDonaldModern biography delights to deal in trivial scandal rather than in large events, andwould often do better to discuss the thought and action of the subject. Yet some ofthese occasions can illustrate a man's way of handling situations. Caesar's calmcharacter and cool method in all things grave and gay, were well displayed when hewas suspected by Cato of being an accomplice of Catiline and of winning time for theapproach of the rebel army to Rome by protracting debate in the Senate. When amessenger brought him a note, Cato demanded it should, in modern parlance, beplaced on the table, but was met with a refusal. On Cato's further insistence, Caesarthrew him the note, observing that he could read it, but no one else could. It was a204 of 424