My Life

My Life - Oswald Mosleythemselves well, but seemed none the worse for it.Their way of life was very different from mine, which rested on the sound advice ofthe classic Greeks: 'Moderation in all things, especially in moderation'. I believed inan ascetic or rather athletic life, relieved by convivial occasions, rather than continualindulgence. Yet I was always resentful of the violent attacks upon these eminent menwhich derived apparently from the vicious disposition among the baser ranges of theConservative Party to slander formidable opponents. I recall still some of the talesthey used to circulate during my childhood about the man who has since become thetribal deity of their party as well as the hero of a large majority of the nation. Thelocal dames of the sub-primrose variety in our county circles were avid to believeanything bad about Mr. Churchill during his Liberal days of the land campaign andthe Ulster explosion. A house in a neighbouring county was burned down where hehappened to be spending the night, and their verdict was clear and simple: naturallyGod sets fire to a house if the Devil enters it. I do not know who circulated the storiesabout his breaking his parole in the Boer War which were so conclusively refuted innumerous law-suits, but I only heard the truth when I arrived in the House ofCommons and got to know him and his friends. It may be some such experiencewhich moved Lady Churchill much later to say, according to a newspaper report: 'Ican remember the time when my husband was more hated than Sir Oswald Mosley istoday'. Mendacious scurrilities and personal vendettas are chiefly revealed by historyin periods of degeneracy, and they are no good portents for our national future;happily in our country they were confined to relatively small circles remote from thegenerous stream of English life.It was also disgraceful that some Tories used to refer to Mr. Asquith as Squiffy andcirculate rumours as filthy as they were fantastic about his wife. There appeared to beabsolutely no foundation for these stories; their only conceivable justification was theentirely uninhibited character of her conversation, designed possibly to epater lesbourgeois, in which she certainly succeeded, and recompensing with a sparkling wither almost complete disregard for facts. For instance, during my first dinner party atThe Wharf she concluded her generous account of my maiden speech by fixing myhand with her claw-like grip and my eye with her ancient-mariner regard as she said:'Your speech reminded me in some ways of my old friend Lord Randolph Churchill,but, dear boy do not share his vices, never live with six women at once, it is soweakening'. This exotic friend of Rosebery and Balfour, and in her youth ofGladstone, certainly traversed in her wayward fashion a wide range of life experience.Mr. Asquith moved serenely above all lesser things. He had no genius, but his ownconduct recalled in some degree his fascinating phrase in another context: 'Geniusalone on its golden wings soars beyond heredity and environment'. He clearly lackedthe decisive and dynamic qualities necessary for a period of great action. He wasrather the man for a Walpole period of protracted peace and relative tranquility, but headded to calm, poise and judgment a vision of the need for steady progress andembodied the finest English qualities of integrity and honour.Mr. Balfour was another link with the more remote political past, and I met him firstwhen I was just out of hospital in the war, even before entering Parliament where wewere fellow-members for only a short time before he went to the House of Lords. In ahappy and uninhibited early life, the opportunity to meet the great often comes by81 of 424