Madam, - Kevin Myers's unfavourable comparison of Churchill with Chamberlain, as with much of what Mr Myers writes, provokes thought. (And how welcome your columnist is back on this page where he belongs!) Had Hitler been satisfied with a genuinely Deutch Grossdeutchland then appeasement would have worked and Chamberlain might well be Britain's statesman of the 20th century, lauded for redressing the wrongs imposed on Germany by the diktat of Versailles and bringing peace in all our time.
And indeed Churchill was an unreconstructed imperialist who had far more in common with Chamberlain's father, "Jingo Joe", than with men of his own sensibly cautious generation. His carving, with Stalin, of new borders for Poland and Germany betrayed a ruthlessness and machiavellianism worthy of Bismarck or Hitler himself, and in many other ways he seems to have been a most unpleasant man.
All that said, more than the British must be grateful that someone had the arrogance, the tenacity, perhaps even the ruthlessness and brute ego to stand against the Nazis.
Every bulldog has his day. - Yours, etc.,
MICHAEL CARRAGHER,
Rockford Park,
Blackrock,
Co Dublin.