My Life

My Life - Oswald MosleyOswald Mosley and MussoliniWe hear much of the thousands detained by Mussolini in the Lipari islands, wherethey suffered a justly condemned imprisonment. We hear less of the millionsslaughtered in the slave camps of Stalin, who became the admired ally of BritishGovernment and the toast of its leaders. These were rough times and Mussolini was arough man, but a squalid assassin he was not. He was ruthless, amoral, brutal whenfighting the brutality of the bestial Red gangs of Italy—all those things —but a patriot,a brave man who served what he saw to be great ends. He was too a man of somevision and some sense of beauty, whose epitaph might be expressed in his own wordsrecommending certain qualities which his life and character incarnated:Youth is beautiful, because it has clear eyes with which to regard and to reflect thevast and tumultous panorama of the world.Youth is beautiful because it has a fearless heart that dreads not death.My relations with Mussolini were terminated by an incident characteristic of Italian-German relations at that time. Three years after Cimmie's death in May 1933, Imarried again in October 1936. Diana was living in a remote country house atWootton in Staffordshire. At that time I was often menaced by threats of assassinationand violence of every kind, and it was therefore out of the question to leave a womanknown to be married to me alone in the deep country; unless the house was stronglyguarded, which we felt would be both expensive and ridiculous, and, worse still,303 of 424