New York, 1963

I have been to the “Battle of Britain” dinner
Held at the Hotel Shelbourne on 37th street and Lexington
And there they were, a few survivors
Of that long dead victory
And there they were too, the non-survivors
Somewhere in the air above us,
Or at any rate in our hearts
The young men who died, humorously, gaily, making jokes
Until the moment when swift blazing death annihilated them.
And there we were, raising our glasses to them
Drinking to their intolerable gallantry
And trying to make believe that their sacrifice
Was worth while
Perhaps it was worthwhile for them, but not for us.
They flew out of life triumphant, leaving us to see
The ideal that they died for humiliated and betrayed
Even more than it had been betrayed at Munich
By those conceited, foolish, frightened old men.
Today in our country it is the young men who are frightened
They write shrill plays about defeat and are hailed as progressive
They disdain our great heritage. They have been labelled by their dull
Facile contemporaries as “Angry Young Men”
But they are not angry, merely scared and ignorant.
Many of them are not even English
But humorless refugees from alien lands
Seeking protection in our English sanity
And spitting on the valiant centuries
That made the sanity possible.
These clever ones, these terrified young men
Who so fear extinction and the Atom bomb
Have little in common with the men we were remembering tonight.
Whatever fears they had remained unspoken. They flew daily and 
       nightly into the sky
Heavily outnumbered by the enemy and saved us for one valedictory year
Gave us one last great chance
To prove to a bemused and muddled world
Our basic quality. All that was done.
The year was lived alone and then
Conveniently forgotten and dismissed
Except for just one night in each long year.
We raised our glasses sentimentally
An Air Vice Marshal made a brief, appropriate speech
And then we chatted a little, oppressed by anti-climax
And finally said goodnight and went our ways.