A Spy Among Friends: Kim Philby and the Great Betrayal

‘The Friends n. General slang for members of an intelligence service; specifically British slang for members of the Secret Intelligence Service, or MI6.’

‘If I had to choose between betraying my country and betraying my friends, I hope I should have the guts to betray my country. Such a choice may scandalise the modern reader, and he may stretch out his patriotic hand to the telephone at once and ring up the police. It would not have shocked Dante, though. Dante places Brutus and Cassius in the lowest circle of Hell because they had chosen to betray their friend Julius Caesar rather than their country Rome.’

E. M. Forster, 1938