My Life

My Life - Oswald Mosleygeography, though not of political ambition, is a satisfied power; its policies will beadvanced through the communist parties rather than nuclear weapons. China, on theother hand, is circumscribed with off-shore islands occupied by alien power, while itsnatural extension in the direction of related peoples to obtain a balance betweenagriculture and industrial development is thwarted by military intervention in South-East Asia. China already begins to arrive as the fourth power, since the long years inwhich I have advocated the division of the world into three spheres of influence. Fatepresented the West with the unforeseeable good fortune of a deep split between thecommunist powers, but us usual we have thrown away the bounty of chance in theegregious folly of Asian war instead of seeking agreement on defined spheres ofinfluence.I was entirely wrong in the matter of the Russian-Chinese split; others foresaw it and Idid not. Russian and Chinese leaders had all been educated in the same staff collegeor, to vary the metaphor, belonged to the same college of cardinals. Whether thisredoubtable organisation, deeply rooted in over a century of common struggle, beregarded as a military or ecclesiastical establishment it seemed to me incredible thatany differences they had in private should be reflected in a public split. A tried andtested general staff does not divide on the morning of a battle whatever differencesmay have occurred in the council chamber, and a college of cardinals does not extendprivate debate to the outside world when dogma is decided and a pope elected. Inholding this view I both illustrated the limitations of a military education and vastlyoverrated the mutual loyalties of communism and the efficacy of the communistapparat. Germans who had been prisoners of war in Russia, or had since travelledthrough Russia and much of China as businessmen, told me the split was bound tohappen, and they were right. Stronger than the communist faith or the bonds of longcomradeship was the tradition of centuries of struggle on one of the longest frontiersin the world. We may in this context vary Disraeli's reprehensible dictum in his life ofLord George Bentinck by saying at least: territory, all is territory.I will not plead the Shavian excuse that I was in error only because I could not believethe degree of other people's stupidity. But this moral collapse of communism, whichmay well have saved a Western world in apparent process of disintegration, seemed tome inconceivable. As usual, the countervailing imbecility was ready on the other sideto rally the day for communism; I failed again in a position then remote either fromthe information or responsibility of office to foresee the full measure of an eventwhich in my previous experience of government would have been incredible. Neverdid I think when I sat in the War Department of the Foreign Office at the end of theFirst World War, surrounded by occasionally limited but always able and honestEnglishmen, that the Foreign Office in a few years' time would nurture a nest of spiesand traitors who would jeopardise the Western world, because responsible statesmenin charge of the department were unable to see what was going on beneath their eyes,in spite of every warning and premonitory symptom. I did not belong to the partieswhose Foreign Secretaries promoted such men or to the decadent society whichnourished and protected them, and I cannot imagine myself in charge of a departmentwhere such things were happening without my knowledge.My original suggestion to secure natural spheres of influence for three power blocs ina realistic equilibrium was the linking of North with South America; of Europe, homeand overseas, with Africa; of the Soviet powers with Asia. This logical arrangement is393 of 424