18 MAY 1962, Page 11

TALK You're a brave man they tell me.

I'm not.

Courage has never been my quality.

Only I thought it disproportionate so to degrade myself as others did.

No foundations trembled. My voice no more than laughed at pompous falsity; 1 did not more than write, never denounced.

I left out nothing 1 had thought about, defended who deserved it, put a brand on the untalented, the ersatz writers (doing what had anyhow to be done).

And now they press to tell me that I'm brave.

How sharply our children will be ashamed taking at last their vengeance for these horrors remembering how in so strange a time common integrity could look like courage.