The Bulletin’s Day Book

Sir Oswald Mosley is back in the headlines again. The ex-Socialist M. P., who started a Black Shirt organization in Great Britain eighteen months ago, modeled, he declared, after Mussolini’s, delighted an audience of ten thousand at Albert Hall Sunday night with a long speech in which he warned “international finance” to keep its hands off England and advised the Jews to abjure Communism and “put the interests of England before the interests of Jewry.”

Sir Oswald spoke for an hour and a half “without any notes and without any pauses except for applause,” the Times reported. Unless we are mistaken, a Fascist leader must be able to speak under the same conditions for at least two hours to win the epaulets of a full-fledged shirt leader.

Arnold Leese, leader of the Imperial Fascists, who spends as much time hating the Mosleyites as they do the Jews (that is, about half of each day for each), frequently orates for more than two hours at a time.

Mosley, wealthy in his own right and scion of a titled family, with the traditional schooling at Winchester and Sandhurst, came into the public eye when, with his wife, the late Lady Cynthia Curzon Mosley, he turned Socialist. A disagreement on policy brought his withdrawal from the Labor Party in 1931 and he swung to the Right with the creation of Britain’s first Fascist party.

Although his party did not start out as anti-Semitic, it may well be said that it was forced into that position. Lady Cynthia was the granddaughter of the late Levi Leiter of Chicago. Their children, therefore, under the “Aryan clause” would be “non-Aryan.”

“Mosley is a tool of the Jews!” rival Fascist leaders cried. Every order of Mosley’s against anti-Semitic practices was scized by them as proof of this contention. Mosley’s outfit, which numbered such illustrious members as Kid Lewis, hero of the British prize ring, began to give ground before the membership drives of the half a dozen other shirt groups.

Now the Mosleyites exclude Jews “because, as a class they are hostile to us” and, with the aid of the endorsement of Lord Rothermere’s papers, the membership of the organization is beginning to swell.

Sir Oswald is tall and lean, with a sharp, aquiline face, black hair, snapping black eyes, and a bristling pointed moustache set somewhat askew. He is most frequently to be seen in the black pull-over Jersey which is the distinguishing feature of the uniform of his group. References to him as a wealthy playboy in politics or uniform irritate him.