My Life

My Life - Oswald Mosleythough for my part I have always said that revenge is the hallmark of small minds.'Stand by your friends, stand up to your enemies,' as I once put it, is a better principlethan Roman Sulla's epitaph: 'Man never knew a truer friend or a more relentless foe'.Thus enmity must cease with the fight, and I am incapable of carrying it further. Thisis an English characteristic, and in my opinion desirable. When the hand is given andthe struggle is ended, the rule of reconciliation should be held with fidelity.It is of course far easier and better never to become embroiled in these bitteranimosities, to be attacked and to reply without resentment, to fight truly for yourbelief when you are in the ring, but to feel no trace of bitterness when you leave it.Asquith is an example of a man who would congratulate as warmly what heconsidered a brilliant attack upon him as he would an able speaker in his defence.Such an attitude is sometimes considered to be detached from humanity, but it has atleast the merit of avoiding some of the more egregious of contemporary errors. Itfollowed naturally from my general attitude that my first serious work in politics wasan attempt to form a movement of the centre, which immediately received thebenevolent interest of Winston Churchill and F. E. Smith and, over a decade later inmore definite form, the active co-operation of Lloyd George. This second mainimpulse clearly derived from my first determination—to prevent a recurrence of war,to save the next generation from the fate of my friends, and to build a country worthyof their sacrifice. As we have seen, my whole political life was in a sensepredetermined by this almost religious conviction, and it inevitably influenced me toseek a continuance of the national union of war for the purposes of peace, forconstruction instead of destruction.It was evident in my election address and in the speeches of my first campaign inHarrow that my thinking and policies cut clean across the programmes and attitudesof existing parties. I was already a man not of the parties but of the centre, and therein terms of the truth underlying the superficial I have remained ever since, until inrecent years I summarised my position in European debate as the 'centre dur contre lecentre pourri'. Paradoxically, I feel obliged to offer apology not for inconsistency,which might be expected from my changes of parties, but for consistency inmaintaining the same basic attitude through superficial changes. This should notnecessarily be reckoned a virtue; to live a lifetime without changing an opinion is tolive without learning and is the mark of a fool. In the unfolding of this story I amsometimes disturbed by my consistency, but though my ideas have not changed theyhave developed and grown with experience, reflection and the test of action.It may also appear a paradox to claim to be of the centre when my policies must seemsometimes to be to the left of the Left and at other times to be to the right of the Right.It is an uncomfortable centre because it is in essence dynamic and not static, but thepoint of equilibrium in these fluent and progressive policies is undoubtedly the centre.To succeed in the continuing crisis of our time they must draw to the centre from leftand right the best of the nation for the purpose of political action by all who aredetermined on survival and greatness. The seeming paradox arises because the policyis designed to evoke action from the whole nation. My attempted combination of'socialism' and 'imperialism' in the election of 1918 was the first crude expression ofthis political synthesis, and it has continued to the present day not only in terms ofsynthesis but of fresh creation in larger spheres and with further vision.85 of 424