Sympathy for Kim Philby

As a fan of the BBC miniseries "Cambridge Spies" (shown here at least twice on ABC), I was chuffed to pick up Douglas Sutherland's "The Fourth Man" at a secondhand bookshop recently for a couple of coins. As you might expect, the real story is much more complicated than the TV dramatisation. While "C/S" gave the impression that all four establishment Brits who spied for the Russians were important, the facts in "T/F/M" suggest otherwise. For this reader, Blunt comes across as a mere dabbler; Burgess a brilliant fool who ended up the victim of his own colossal joke; and Maclean a trapped, confused alcoholic (possibly with an undiagnosed mental illness). Only Philby is shown to truly believe in communism and continue walking the walk once behind the Iron Curtain, receiving the Soviet Union's "Red Banner Of Honour" and rising to the rank of general in the KGB. (Which is not to say I approve of his actions - his treachery was responsible for the deaths of many of his own countrymen and their allies.) Curiously, Sutherland closes with the line, "After all, espionage is the second oldest profession in the world." Is he suggesting these men were nothing more than prostitutes? In Philby's case, I would disagree.