An apology to Balliol Men

I said some sarcastic things about Oxbridge yesterday. My irritation is not with Oxbridge people themselves. As Sir Humphrey might have said, some of my best friends are Oxbridge graduates! My problem is with the public perception of this class. It is an irritation which goes back to when I was a teacher and a senior colleague blocked a frank report I had written about the school's most aggressively insular student on the grounds that she was destined for Cambridge (not what he said, but that was the truth of it). All I had said was that she had to learn to listen to other people and dialogue with their ideas, instead of treating everyone who disagreed with her as a lower species. I resented enormously the assumption that attendance at a swanky university was more important than her development as a human being. I hope she has since developed.

Anyway, I was thus quite unsurprised by todays's news that Anjoum Noorani, the senior civil servant really responsible for the papal visit memo scandal, also studied at Oxford (like Steven Mulvain who took the flak yesterday for circulating it). I'm perfectly sure I wouldn't have lasted five minutes in either place, but I cannot stand the kind of British snobbery that laments the fall of Oxbridge graduates as if it were as tragic as the fall of Satan.

That said, the fact these two specimens attended Balliol College touched my heart, and made me think warmer thoughts. And my mind went back to Hilaire Belloc's ode to Balliol Men, which I post here as an apology to my Oxbridge readers.

TO THE BALLIOL MEN STILL IN AFRICA

YEARS ago when I was at Balliol,
Balliol men and I was one
Swam together in winter rivers,
Wrestled together under the sun.

And still in the heart of us, Balliol, Balliol,
Loved already, but hardly known,
Welded us each of us into the others :
Called a levy and chose her own.

Here is a House that armours a man
With the eyes of a boy and the heart of a ranger,
And a laughing way in the teeth of the world
And a holy hunger and thirst for danger :

Balliol made me, Balliol fed me,
Whatever I had she gave me again :
And the best of Balliol loved and led me.
God be with you, Balliol men.

I have said it before, and I say it again,
There was treason done, and a false wordspoken,
And England under the dregs of men,
And bribes about, and a treaty broken:

But angry, lonely, hating it still,
I wished to be there in spite of the wrong.
My heart was heavy for Cumnor Hill
And the hammer of galloping all day long.

Galloping outward into the weather,
Hands a-ready and battle in all:
Words together and wine together
And song together in Balliol Hall.

Rare and single ! Noble and few ! . . .
Oh ! they have wasted you over the sea !
The only brothers ever I knew,
The men that laughed and quarrelled with me.

Balliol made me, Balliol fed me,
Whatever I had she gave me again;
And the best of Balliol loved and led me,
God be with you, Balliol men.