My Life

My Life - Oswald Mosleysteamer, and my sea hazards had so far been no more arduous than the swimmingpoolof an Atlantic liner. However, we were all set to go, Diana and I, our two smallchildren, our equally inexperienced butler, and the two sailors.The boat, a sixty-ton fifty-fifty power-and-sail ketch, was moored in Southampton,and our plans were by no means concealed. Curiously enough, on the eve of ourdeparture, we were given our passports; we were really free at last in the summer of1949, four years after the end of the war. Strangely moves the mind of Whitehall inunfathomable and impenetrable mystery, but on this occasion I have some reason tobelieve that it was not the depths of the official world which were being stirred butonly the muddy puddle of politics. Perhaps some politicians felt that the governmentwould have looked foolish if we sailed despite the ban, and they may have surmisedthat we would be well received in some quarters. Anyhow, freedom came across atlast with quite a good grace. I had not been obliged to 'lend to defend the right to befree', only to buy to defend the right to be free, a yacht.It is difficult in any analysis of this strange event to discern any serious motive exceptpure spite. What did they fear? They had nuclear weapons, and I had only the voiceand pen of Mosley. It is nattering to imagine that my physical presence would havetransformed the world situation, but plainly illusory, even by Whitehall standards. If Ihad made a nuisance of myself and broken any of the new laws in any country, Ishould simply have been put in jail, and Whitehall would have been delighted. In anycase, by stopping me travelling they could only suppress the voice and not the pen.They had no means of preventing my writings circulating in Europe, and in fact theywere being published freely in all countries except France, which to me was alwaysthe land apart from politics. Even before I was free to leave England, publicationswere appearing in Europe with principles and slogans —such as 'Europe a Nation'—first declared by me in post-war speeches in East London. If they feared the impact ofmy ideas, they could not stop it.However, we were free at last, and in early June we left Southampton and set offdown the Channel. It was pretty rough and we were all ill for the last time, becausethat ten-hour buffeting cured us for good of this tiresome complaint; it was no goodgoing on being sick on this small boat for the whole of the voyage. After a night spentstruggling up the Channel and round Finisterre, we arrived off Brest around dawn, butfog reduced visibility to a few yards and we had no means of entry. Luckily, after anhour or two we met a fishing-boat which guided us into port. We landed on Frenchsoil.The whole landscape seemed still to be flat from war bombardment; hardly a housewas standing. No one appeared to be bothering much about passports, and we had agenial seafarers' welcome. We lunched early in a battered tin hut which was aseamen's bistro; it seemed three star to us. I walked a little through the remnants of thecity where I had come to France for the first time thirty-six years before to learn thelanguage, and it seemed the sea had given life back to me. In the emotion of being onFrench soil again, even in the desolation of these forlorn surroundings, I was movedto say to this moment of reunion with Europe—'Verweile dock, du hist so schon', thedesperate but ecstatic apostrophe addressed to the transient moment of beauty by theimmortal whose thought not only linked Germany and France but encompassed andennobled our whole continent—I felt all Europe was there to greet me, the past, the350 of 424