My Life

My Life - Oswald Mosleyeffective with the epee, the heavy duelling sword, which required less mobility. I wastwice to be runner-up to different champions with this weapon in the Britishchampionship, and was a member of our international team. The last time Irepresented Britain was in the 1937 world championship at Paris, but I had no chancethen of winning: the dream of great achievement in that young world was gone.Nevertheless, fencing took me all over Europe into the intimacies of other peopleswhich the salles d'armes so richly provide. Many happy memories remain of joyouscompanionship in Paris, Milan, Rome and all the chief centres of Europe; vividamong them is the vision of Sergeant-Major Adam walking with his springy stepalong the Winchester High Street, head erect, chest out, holding his cane with correctsabre grip between the thumb and the heel of the hand, the forearm moving like asteel spring to the parry as he fought again in memory his epic contest with theredoubtable Betts, eleven years champion of the army; entire oblivion in his unseeingeyes for all lesser things, which included the scurrying scholars who later in the daywould be welcome in his gymnasium to taste of manhood. May he so walk proudlyforever, through an Elysian salle d'armes.Did Winchester then give me nothing except the physical experience, because I wasintellectually incapable of appreciating any of the things which really interested me inlater life? This is not altogether true, because before my full physical development Ihad a certain spiritual experience. I must have been confirmed just before myfourteenth birthday, certainly by wish of my mother and with my own willing consent.We were instructed by a sympathetic clergyman who was also one of the masters, agood man of sensitive mind and delicate spirit. Neither then nor at any time had I anysense of revelation, but I became immensely impressed by the doctrine of love and theextraordinary impact it had on a very different world. It may be that my abnormalspeed of growth had left a certain physical weakness as in a man who has been fasting,which made me at that time particularly susceptible. This materialist explanation mayhave some force but it is by no means entirely valid, for an impression of the possiblepower of love has remained with me ever since. It fascinated me later in mypreoccupation with a conceivable synthesis between some elements of Christianteaching and the Hellenism which influenced my maturity. Nineteenth-centurythinking seemed to me laden with this potential, which might in some degree berealised in the thought and even in the action of our day. All this was remote from myconsciousness at Winchester, but I look back to that gentle schoolmaster inrecognition of a first impulse which was submerged for a time in the torrent of life butreturned in some degree in the years of reflection and striving for creation.I have often since wondered whether priests and schoolmasters are wise in theirpresentation of religion to the young. Anything more repulsive to the religious sensethan being dragged to morning chapel between early lessons and breakfast is difficultto imagine. Systematic starvation over a protracted period may induce a state ofholiness, but delaying his first meal of the day to a hungry boy evokes the contraryemotions. In some schools this noxious practice has been abandoned, but the questionstill remains whether the droning of the compulsory services, only occasionallyrelieved by some fine music in a beautiful old chapel at school or church at home, isreally calculated to produce a regard for religion.Perhaps the ancients were wiser in their concepts of the mysteries. Is more interestengendered by private and progressive initiation into the strange beauty of the greatreligions? What would be the effect on a boy if he were told that the revelation of31 of 424