Of Horlicks and Heroism

by Theodore Dalrymple (May 2014)

Who invited him in? What was he doing here,

That insolent little ruffian, that crapulous lout?

When he quitted a sofa, he left behind him a smear.

Why, then, the dirty little accuser? The next verse makes this clear:

What was worse, if, as often happened, we caught him out

His poetry is relatively straightforward but not therefore shallow. The Thespians at Thermopylae, for example, raises an important question about the nature of courage, and no doubt by implication of other virtues. At the battle of Thermopylae, the Spartans, led by King Leonidas, fought a desperate rearguard action against the huge invading Persian army of Xerxes and were annihilated. The Spartans were not alone, however: they were assisted by the Thespians, not actors but citizens of the city of Thespiae. The poem begins:

The honours that the people give always

Pass to those use-besotted gentlemen

Whose numskull courage is a kind of fear,

But we, actors and critics of one play,

Of sober-witted judgment, who could see

So many roads, and chose the Spartan way,

What has the popular report to say

One of his poems was inspired by post-war Vienna in winter, when the city was still under four-power occupation, and is called Liberation in Vienna. Its first line is memorable:

Winter is made to stand for totalitarianism. Its effect is everywhere and inescapable, and the poem continues:

Like savage troops in grimy battledress

His piles of dirty snow sit there and glower,

But winter does not last forever, of course. Luckily the seasons change:

But now the glorious legions of the sun

The formed platoons of Winter break and run,

Their dingy corpses tumble down the drain.

But no victory of summer over winter is final, just as no political victory is final, no triumph over totalitarianism or other type of political pathology complete, no better political arrangement proof against degeneration back into something horrible. Cameron warns us that, celebrate the return of summer as we might, we cannot rest assured:

Winter is gone, with all his dreadful crew.

Yet still they have the words to make us falter:

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