The Virtuous Man and the Hollow Man

In 1937 George Orwell went to Spain; in 1980 Christopher Dickey went to Central America. Both set out to write about wars—Orwell to do articles on the Spanish Civil War for left-wing British periodicals, Dickey to do articles on the revolutionary wars in Nicaragua, El Salvador, and Guatemala for the Washington Post. Both experienced war directly—Orwell as a partisan, Dickey as an observer. Both risked their lives. Both wrote books about their experiences: Orwell, Homage to Catalonia; Dickey, With the Contras (Simon and Schuster, 1986). Orwell’s book became a classic; Dickey’s has received extremely favorable reviews and may become a classic, too.

But there are some important things that Orwell ...