Little Man in Black

With the sleek, prancing mien of a political Douglas Fairbanks, the No. i British Fascist, Sir Oswald Ernald Mosley, put on a one-man show before 15.000 Londoners last week which ended in a hundred fist fights, scores of hair pullings and some bloody work with razors. Sir Oswald drew no blood but a good many shrugs by his feat seven weeks ago of filling Albert Hall with 10,000 London ers whose applause of his hour and a half speech left the nation cold. Only the Communists seemed to take Sir Oswald seriously. They turned out last week by hundreds when he packed vast Olympia, the six-acre hall in which Their Majesties sit through many a patriotic pageant. With what London reporters called a chorus of "borrowed Americanism" the British Bolsheviks jeered at the blackshirts: "Mosley is Public Enemy Number One!"

Trumpets blared and Fascist banners were unfurled as Sir Oswald walked out alone to take the centre of the arena. "If the Fascists are elected to power," he bawled, "we will not leave Britain the only unarmed nation in an armed world!"

Without waiting to hear what else the little man in black might have to say, Reds started 20 fist fights in 20 different parts of Olympia. These were broken up by Fascist "flying squads" who squelched male hecklers but stood back before women disturbers until female Fascist squelchers could rush in. As they dug in with finger nails and hair pulling, ladies in the audience paled, tugged at their escort's arms, insisted on being taken home. Suddenly from the steel rafters of Olympia, more than 50 feet above Sir Oswald, daring antiFascists set up a jeering din.

Fascist spotlights switched from the leader to the rafters. Grim Fascist squad leaders shinnied up the roof supports and led their blackshirts in a crawling advance along the beams. Since a fight in mid-air would mean scores of falling bodies, the audience leaped up in panic. Sir Oswald bellowed: "Black Shirts aloft--attention! I want no fighting under the roof!"

Perspiring with relief, Fascist squad leaders aloft called a truce with the antiFascists and all crawled to safety. By this time half the audience had fled. Jews considered that Sir Oswald in the windup of his speech touched a new high in British antiSemitism. He twitted the Conservative Party for "following the ideals of Disraeli, an Italian Jew,''-- lambasted British Socialists (i. e. Laborites) for their "loyalty to Karl Marx, a German Jew" and polished off the Liberal Party by referring sarcastically to one of its Jewish leaders as "that staunch John Bull, Sir Herbert Samuel!" "Down with Mosley!" cried several hecklers as fresh fights, this time with razors, began. Sir Oswald himself directed part of the cleanup. Then, rushing back to his microphones, he cried:

"Red raiders from the ghetto, urged on by Moscow's gold, have been attempting to break up this meeting. These raiders carried knives, razors, and every weapon known to the ghettos of humanity in their effort to deny free speech to Englishmen."

Next day the old guard British parties denounced Sir Oswald for his foreign and un-British resort to force in founding a "private army'' instead of sticking to straight politics. Laborites accused the police of improper Fascist leanings and undue readiness at Olympia to arrest working-class hecklers. Over the weekend six Cabinet Ministers dignified British Fascism by making speeches against it. Keynoters: Minister of Labor Sir Henry Betterton: "The country must decide at the next election whether constitutional government will remain or be destroyed." Colonial Secretary Sir Philip Cunliffe-Lister: "If the disaster of Dictatorship comes to England it is certain that force will be met by force." Minister of Agriculture Walter Elliot: "We want no Dictator!"

--Historically, Disraeli's ancestors are said to have been Spanish Jews who fled from the Inquisition to Venice.

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