My Life

My Life - Oswald Mosley19 - Hitler and MussoliniConversations and ImpressionsThe AbdicationMUSSOLINI and Hitler were interested in our movement, not because our policieswere similar—the aims of these intensely national movements in each country werewidely divergent—but because we were strongly opposed to communism, andunlikely to quarrel with any European country which had no intention of challengingBritish interests. Therefore, my experience of meeting these leaders can possiblyconvey a unique impression because it is the view of an Englishman with whom theyfelt it possible to get on reasonably well, at least on a basis of live and let live. I metMussolini about half a dozen times between 1932 and the last occasion in 1936. It wasconvenient to see him once a year as I usually had my month's holiday in Italysomewhere in the neighbourhood of Naples.The British Embassy, conducted with skill and grace by Sir Ronald and Lady SybilGraham, arranged my first interview with Mussolini, who was on good terms withthem. This was not because they shared his opinions but because they took thetraditional view that it was the business of an ambassador to be polite, to understandthe opinion of the country to which he was accredited and to transmit a clearappreciation of its attitude to his own government; the epoch of the dull, rude clerkparading his native prejudice in foreign capitals, or of the drunken dilettante on thecommunist fringe, had not yet arrived.Benito Mussolini and Adolf Hitler299 of 424