My Life

My Life - Oswald MosleyThe consequence of the Sandhurst affair was not serious as none of us incurred anyloss of promotion, although we should have suffered the loss of a term but for the war.My chief regret was that two of my friends were also sent down with me for the fewweeks which remained of the term. After news of my injury got around, a number ofthem from the two main buildings had assembled to deal with my assailants. It wasthen getting late at night and it was considered a breach of discipline to leave theirquarters, particularly for the suspected purpose of fighting other people. I was sentdown as initially responsible for the affair and they were sent down as leaders in thesubsequent action on my behalf. Happily it appeared in no way to have affected theirmilitary careers, and one of them ended up as a general. It was all very foolish, and ofcourse I should not have got into a fight about something so trivial; at seventeen yousometimes do things, in the period of early vitality when spirits are high, which youwould not dream of doing a year or two later. I do not think that anyone was much toblame; but it was mostly my fault.When highly garbled versions of this affair were circulated in my later life, I wasconsoled by the reflection that I must have a character and career of singularimpeccability if the only ground for attack was an incident when I was seventeen. Itwas regrettable at the time, as even then I was becoming too adult for that kind ofthing. Fighting for the fun of it had already ceased to amuse. I had been brought up inthe corinthian tradition—as it was called in the previous century—which made menever ready to fight as a sport, or at the least provocation; but already with thedevelopment of other interests and general intelligence I was beginning to grow out ofit. I never perhaps learned to swallow insults, but I did at least learn to ignore them.To do otherwise is by definition too Latin, too un-English. A brilliant Frenchpolitician put the point with wit when he said: 'If a Latin is walking down the streetand feels a heavy kick on the bottom, he cannot resist at least turning his head tonotice who has done it; but the genius of you English in these circumstances is thatyou just pass on, unnoticing and uncaring'.It became my ever increasing conviction throughout life that we should do our utmostto avoid the use of force; it is the last and saddest necessity. Perhaps the biggest factorin my development of this sense was experience of the First War. For everyone whowent through that war the fun went out of force for good. Also, a continuallyincreasing distaste for the use of force is part of the process of growing up, both forindividuals and for nations. It is the development of the adult mind which eliminatesthe passions and actions of childhood. It is impossible to imagine the 'ancients' ofShaw's farthest vision in Back to Methuselah indulging in a 'punch-up'.Certainly from the first war onwards I had a repugnance for violence, and in particularfor its brutal and unnecessary use. Later in politics I had to prove my capacity anddetermination to meet violence with force and by leadership and organisation toovercome it. The sad fact is that in human affairs this is sometimes necessary. Yetwhen all is said and the past is done, we have to face the modern fact that the worldsimply cannot survive a continuance of the habit of violence. It has been the way ofmen to settle their disputes in this manner from time immemorial, at a certain point tolose their temper and fight. Quite suddenly the forward spring of science makes it toodangerous. All our instincts, all our training, all our concepts of manhood and ofcourage must—far too quickly for the slow movement of nature—be adjusted to acorresponding change. We have to put away childish things and become adult. It is38 of 424