s Schooldays' lamented the fact that people
flew past the White Horse in stuffy first class carriages; were he alive
now he would lament still more that English men and English women can
pass the White Horse without a glance up from the novel they are reading
bound in a flaring yellow cover. But there is one great Englishman who
will never do this, and that is Chesterton; rather he writes of the
White Horse, the lonely horse that is worthy of this splendid poem.

* * * * *

In connection with the Vale of White Horse there are three
traditions--one, that Alfred fought a great battle there; another, that
he played a harp in the camp of the Danes; a third, that Alfred proved
himself a very bad cook who wasted a poor woman's cake, a poor woman who
would willingly have sacrificed cakes every day to have the honour of
the king under her roof.

It is of these three traditions that Chesterton writes his poem.
Whether they may be historically accurate does not much matter; there is
no doubt that the Vale had something to do with the King of Wessex, and
popular tradition has made the name of Alfred a national legend.

When Chesterton writes of the vision of the king he is no doubt writing
of his own vision of the events that led up to the gathering of the
chiefs. The Danes had descended on England like a cloud of locusts; it
was the time that needed a National Champion, as time and again in the
past the Israelites had needed one. It is one of the strange things of
history that a champion has always appeared when he was most needed. The
name of the Danes inspired terror; Wessex was shattered--

'For earthquake following earthquake
Uprent the Wessex tree ...'

The kings of Wessex were weary and disheartened: fire and pillage had
laid the countryside bare with that horrible bareness that only lies in
the wake of conqueror:

'There was not English armour left,
Nor any English thing,
When Alfred came to Athelney
To be an English king.'

This was the vision that Alfred had, and he gathered the disheartened
chiefs to his side till, in victory, he could bear the name of king.

* * * * *

In the wake of national champions there have ever appeared popular tales
demonstrating the human qualities of these giants; if Napoleon could
conquer empires, tradition has never forgotten that he once pardoned a
sentry he found asleep at