Mick Hartley

Ben Macintyre in the Times writes about the instinctive courage of Liviu Librescu at Virginia Tech, and wonders how those of us who’ve never had the occasion to be heroes might react if put to the test:

When I was Paris correspondent for this paper, I found myself wondering the same thing whenever I saw one of those formal little plaques nailed to a city wall, commemorating another fallen Resistance fighter. Would I have risked life, family, future, like the courageous few under Nazi occupation, or joined the great majority of French in sullen silence and fearful acquiescence? Answering that question was made no easier by the discovery that some of those Resistance plaques are bogus, part of an organised public relations campaign by Charles de Gaulle to restore France’s self-respect after a shattering war.

Can this be true? I’ll never think of the French in the same way again.