My Life

My Life - Oswald Mosleyinto war without even attempting an alternative policy. It was indeed a strange idea tomake certain of war today without arms, in case we had to fight a war tomorrow witharms. Strive for peace but prepare for war, was then the course of sense and patriotism.Was there at that time a comprehensive world policy available which could haveaverted war? My essay 'The World Alternative' (1937) advancing a policy which inmy view could avoid war, was published in England and also in the German reviewGeopolitik: I have already described its reception in Germany. It began with the 'ideawhich animated the post-war generation', in my description of'the union of Europe ina system of public law and order which broadly applied to international affairs the lawand sanctions of law commonly employed within each nation in the maintenance ofdomestic order and justice. The analogy clearly is subject to necessary modificationby the exigencies of national sovereignty, for the men who had just fought to save theBritish Empire rightly would not tolerate the future of that Empire being decided byany international tribunal which might be dominated by representatives of SouthAmerican republics. For despite the reiterated attempts of the international school tofetter the great with the chains of the small, the essence of national sovereignty waspreserved in the original covenant of the League of Nations.'It then contended that the League of Nations had been turned into the balance ofpower which had always brought war: 'The world, in fact, is divided into two campsof the possessors and the dispossessed ... in one camp are Britain, France and theSoviets; in the other camp by inevitable gravitation of common circumstances areGermany and Italy; and to that camp by analagous folly is being added Japan. Withthe return of the balance of power we witness the return of the arms race and theconcomitant Press agitation which inflames the mind and spirit of Europe to freshfatality.'I analysed the circumstances in which Europe had arrived at this situation and how theoriginal idea of the League had been destroyed. America had defected, six othernations had been allowed to defy the League with impunity—Japan, Turkey, Poland,Lithuania, Bolivia and Paraguay—the departure of Germany had been madeinevitable because a Treaty had been forced upon it 'not only unjust in its inceptionbut subsequently violated on repeated occasions to their own advantages by those whohad dictated it'. The process was then completed by driving Italy out of the Leagueand into the other camp by the application of sanctions. I quoted Sir Edward Grigg,Governor of Kenya Colony, to the effect that Abyssinia had for years past raided notonly Italian but British territory for slaves, and had committed definite acts of warwithout one finger being lifted by Geneva or the British Government.Yet when Italy took 'precisely the same measures to suppress these evils as had beentaken at every stage of the honourable building of the British Empire', action had beentaken against her, although 'six nations had already with complete impunity violatedthe covenant of the League. . . . From this ultimate folly arises the final recurrence ofworld fatality in the re-emergence of the balance of power.'The indictment of the old party policy did not stop there. 'A feeble BritishGovernment taking the lead in an unjust cause,' and hard pressed to find support, hadsought the assistance of the Soviets at Geneva against Italy. 'From this Europeanalignment arises the subservience of British to Soviet policy in the East, for Britain320 of 424