Retreat from Mosley

The porcine British Press Tycoon Lord Rothermere, pudding-headed brother of the late great Northcliffe, caught acute cold feet last week regarding his candidate for British dictator, Sir Oswald Ernald Mosley.

Ever since British public opinion was revolted by Adolf Hitler's ruthless blood-purge the Rothermere press drive for Mosley Fascism has been weakening and wobbling. A recent Daily Mail editorial announced the noble Lord's discovery that Britain "needs and will have no dictators." To Sir Oswald that sounded like welshing. He dashed off a letter to Lord Rothermere which the Daily Mail printed last week under the headline "DIVERGENCE OF IDEAS."

"You are a Conservative," wrote Sir Oswald to the peer who has been his chief backer. "We Black Shirts are Fascists. . . . You would like us to abandon the creed of Fascism and the word Fascist. We cannot do this because it is a creed which means everything in the world to us." He expounded three principles of action in which he believes and Lord Rothermere apparently does not:

1) "The complete reorganization of the industrial system."

2) "[When] we capture a Parliamentary majority in the next election, we will certainly confer upon the Government the complete power of action which we believe necessary. This is not tyranny because Parliament will be able to dismiss the Government by a vote of censure if it abuses that power."

3) "We have given our pledge that no racial or religious persecution will occur under Fascism in Britain, but we shall require Jews, like everyone else, to put the interest of Britain first."

To this Lord Rothermere replied in the same issue of the Daily Mail: "I never thought that a movement calling itself 'Fascist' could be successful in this country. . . . I never could support any movement with an anti-Semitic bias, any movement which had dictatorship as one of its objectives or any movement which will substitute a 'corporate State' for Parliamentary institutions in this country. . . . The assistance which I rendered you was given in the hope that you would be prepared to ally yourself with the Conservative forces to defeat Socialism at the next and succeeding elections.

"Notwithstanding your letter, I do not see why we should not come together on the foregoing lines. . . . "I have never thought the political situation here bears any resemblance to the political situation in Italy or Germany. In each of these countries parliamentary institutions were largely an exotic growth, whereas in England they have since the time of Queen Elizabeth exercised a real and decisive influence."

Overnight the Rothermere retreat from Mosley gave pause to the maker of Britain's snorting little Morris cars. Lord Nufneld, formerly Sir William Morris, reputedly a heavy contributor to Sir Oswald's Fascist war chest. In a letter to The Jewish Chronicle Lord Nufneld announced that he had just given -L-250 ($1.250) to the British fund for refugees from Nazidom and roundly declared: "I never subscribed to the Fascist movement nor supported it in any way; neither have I the least antipathy toward the Jewish race. It occurs to me that the best means of evidencing the foregoing statements may be for me to make a subscription to Jewish charitv."

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