My Life

My Life - Oswald Mosleynation might unite to win salvation. A brotherhood of the British was born that in thestrength of union was invincible and irresistible.Today the nation faces a foe more dangerous because he dwells within, and a situationno less grave because to all it is not yet visible. We have been divided, and we havebeen conquered, because by division of the British alone we can be conquered. Classagainst class, faction against faction, party against party, interest against interest, managainst man, and brother against brother has been the tactic of the warfare by whichthe British in the modern age, for the first time in their history, have been subdued.We have been defeated, too, at a moment in our history when the world was at ourfeet, because the heritage won for us by the heroism of our fathers affords to thegenius of modern science and the new and unprecedented triumph of the human mindan opportunity of material achievement leading, through the gift of economic freedom,to a higher spiritual civilisation than mankind, in the long story of the human race, hasyet witnessed.Can we recapture the union of 1914 and that rapturous dedication of the individual toa cause that transcends self and faction, or are we doomed to go down with theEmpires of history in the chaos of usury and sectional greed? That is the question ofthe hour for which every factor and symptom of the current situation presses decision.Is it now possible by a supreme effort of the British spirit and the human will to arrestwhat, in the light of all past history, would appear to be the course of destiny itself?For we have reached the period, by every indication available to the intellect, at whicheach civilisation and Empire of the past has begun to traverse that downward path tothe dust and ashes from which their glory never returned. Every fatal symptom of thepast is present in the modern situation, from the uprooting of the people's contact withthe soil to the development of usury and the rule of money power, accompanied bysocial decadence and vice that flaunts in the face of civilisation the doctrine of defeatand decline.'These tendencies in contemporary life, which were the subject of daily comment inour speeches at mass public meetings and were the theme of our policies seeking toreverse them, were interrupted by the war; the British showed that they were indeedstill capable of the effort I had asked them to make, though for very different purposes.But a revival of the national will for the brief period of war is not enough, and theevils we combated in the thirties have now returned with renewed force in a generalsituation of national weakness much aggravated by war. This analysis brought me inthe conclusion of this book inevitably to Spengler:'Above the European scene towers in menace Spengler's colossal contribution tomodern thought, which taught our new generation that a limit is set to the course ofcivilisations and Empires, and that the course that once is run is for ever closed. Everyindication of decadence and decline which he observed as a precursor of the downfallof a civilisation is apparent in the scene, and from all history he deduced the sombreconclusion that the effort of "Faustian" man to renew his youth, and to recapture thedawn of a civilisation, must ever fail. History is on the side of the great philosopher,and every sign of the period with fatal recurrence supports his view. His massivepessimism, supported by impressive armoury of fact, rises in challenge and in menaceto our generation and our age. We take up that challenge with the radiant optimismborn of man's achievements in the new realm of science, that the philosopher274 of 424