No amount of invective launched at the (admittedly) highly patronising British colonial authorities towards the Maltese during British foreign occupation of the island can obscure the fact that the George Cross has immortalised those qualities of the Maltese which, reading between the lines of modern history, have kept the island from falling apart during one of the most difficult periods of Malta's past. It was precisely these qualities which came to the forefront in Malta's subsequent struggle for independence and it would therefore be well to acknowledge the fact that courage and devotion belong to the Maltese nation just as much as the political fact of independence and Malta's past status as a British colony, the memory of which Joseph Vella has apparently made it his mission to "consciously keep alive".

The commemoration last week in Valletta of the bestowal of the George Cross on Malta was deeply moving not as a spectacle, neither as a gathering of the sentimental and the nostalgic, but as an acknowledgement of the staunchness and fearless determination with which ordinary Maltese men and women during the war years faced the grim reality of an island almost blitzed out of existence. This is the stuff of reality, not of theatrics.