IN the present international crisis, I’m surprised not to have seen quoted a twoline poem by the late Philip Larkin, written in 1969: When the Russian tanks roll westward, what defence for you and me?

Col Sloman’s Essex Rifles? The Light Horse of the LSE?

While not (yet) threatening you and me, the Russian tanks are now rolling westward.

Whether their crews are Russian is a moot point. The president of Lithuania, Dalia Grybauskaite, is gloomy enough to state: “Russia is in state of war against Ukraine.”

She adds that since Ukraine wishes to join the EU, “Russia is practically in a state of war against Europe”.

As with the Cuban missile stand-off between Russia and the United States in 1962, disaster over Ukraine will probably be averted. But the confrontation seems further evidence of the world fulfilling the expectation, expressed soon after the Second World War, of another poet, Cecil Day Lewis: Will it be as before – Peace with no heart or mind to ensue it, Guttering down to war, Like a libertine to his grave? We should not be surprised: we knew it Happen before.

Certainly the sabre rattling has been both alarming and pathetic. Alarming from President Putin, who reminded the West: “Russia is one of the leading nuclear powers. It’s best not to mess with us.”

In other words: “We’ll nuke you if we feel we need to.”

Meanwhile – the pathetic bit – David Cameron warned Russia of “consequences” if it did not pull back. And what might they be? Mr Cameron rules out war, which is just as well since Britain’s military capability – forces and equipment – has been severely slashed.

Worryingly, with 20,000 regular soldiers being axed, in phases, it’s just been revealed that an attempt to recruit more reservists is a dismal failure. Just 140 have signed up this year.

So we might struggle to meet Russia’s tanks even with the makeshift militia.

All this takes no account of the terrorists moving among us. Barely making headlines last week was the discovery, on a laptop seized from Islamic State in Iraq, of detailed instructions for making a biological bomb, coupled with religious justification (twaddle) for using one.

Maybe this influenced the raising of the terrorism threat level here from “substantial” to “severe”. So far in the 21st Century, we’ve suffered nothing as cataclysmic as the two world wars of the 20th. We ain’t seen nothing yet.

ARGUABLY the nation’s biggest preoccupation is football. A copper or two short of £60m is paid for one player, who (not uniquely) will earn close on £240,000 a week. It’s sick, and it mirrors a sick society.

The remedy lies with the fans, who should ensure that the super teams stuffed with the most expensive foreign players perform to empty seats. Where’s the pride in a town club winning anything with a team that is virtually a top-class World XI, shorn of roots in the community?