“Let Nobody Belittle Them

By Pretending They Were Fearless”:

It was good to take up one’s courage again, which had been laid aside so long, and feel how comfortably it fitted into the hand.

So wrote Rebecca West, writing in the Epilogue to Black Lamb and Grey Falcon p. 1125 (1941), of the English right after the fall of France (thanks to Richard Aubrey for first pointing out this quote). Yet important too is what follows a few pages later (p. 1130) (paragraph break added):

Most [Londoners, after and during] the fall of France believed, and rightly, that they were presently to be subjected to a form of attack more horrible than had ever before been directed against the common man.

Let nobody belittle them by pretending they were fearless. Not being as the ox and the ass, they were horribly afraid. But their pale lips did not part to say the words that would have given them security and dishonour.