My Life

My Life - Oswald Mosleyoccupied with redundant domestic details. A man of considerable ability and immenseindustry, he became exhausted by attending to things which were quite unnecessary, arange of large establishments, and the staff required to conduct them. What Natureintended for politics was given to an interior decorating business. He had fine tasteand knowledge which enabled him to acquire a valuable collection of pictures andobjets d'art. Most of this collection was purchased by money supplied on hisdaughters' account, and they behaved generously in never attempting to deprive himof the results. He would have been wiser as well as more correct had he lived in afashion more modest and less exacting, surrounded by a few objects whose beauty herightly loved, leaving his time available for more serious considerations.Lord Curzon's private life was indeed curiously organised, and in a manner whichclearly exhausted him prematurely. I found him one day nailing down the stair carpetat Hackwood, and ventured to suggest that this was an inappropriate exercise for theSecretary of State for Foreign Affairs, as half-a-dozen footmen were available for thetask. Could not one of them do it? Yes, but not so well, was the reply. He sufferedfrom what I call the Bonaparte complex. A cherished possession was one of the bestlibraries in the country on the subject of Napoleon, which he afterwards bequeathed tothe Bodleian at Oxford. He had firmly grasped the central fact of Bonapartism, that byworking eighteen hours a day one of the ablest men who ever lived could personallysupervise every detail of the working of his State and army; it was said down to thelast button on the last gaiter of the last soldier. What my father-in-law never fullyunderstood was that Napoleon's was the last epoch in which such a way of life waspossible, even with such ability. The machine has become too big for such personalcontrol by even the most gifted individual; in a later age even Caesarism has to becollective. The opposite method must be employed, which entails delegation, andrests, above all, on the choice of men. The ideal of modern organisation is that theablest man in the central position should have only two functions: to initiate, and torepair when no one else can. He should be there to create ideas and to derive themfrom the whole nation—particularly from science—to launch them, and to drive themforward; also to act as a permanent breakdown gang in the event of disaster, whichcracks the nerve of most men or passes beyond their capacities. That concept ofmodern method was not within the range of Lord Curzon.Curzon was a great public servant who deserved better than the shabby treatment hereceived in the end. He was not in touch with the mass of the people as modern primeministers must be, and he lacked the sensitive antennae which enable men to knowwhat completely different people are thinking and feeling and so to devise their action.But as Prime Minister he would at least have saved the country from the squalidbetrayal which led the nation toward war without providing the necessary armamentsthrough fear of losing an election. In that sense was justified, after Curzon's defeat, hisbitter jibe that Baldwin's appointment was the strangest event of its kind sinceCaligula had made his horse a consul. Curzon's limitations in the sphere of economicsshould not necessarily have inhibited his rise to the highest office of State, becauseothers could then have taken adequate economic measures in spheres unfamiliar to thePrune Minister. He would, however, have been impossible as Prime Minister in thepresent period, because the intimate revelation of television immediately presents as afigure of fun any archaic aristocrat who is clearly as remote from the lives of thepeople as he is ignorant of the all-important subject of economics.99 of 424