LISTENING to and reading about the response we in the West can make reminds me of an anecdote which my history master related to our class in the early 1950s.

He said the Pope had been berating Stalin for what I can’t now remember. Stalin replied by asking: “How many divisions have you?” which sums it up nicely.

In tribute to the teacher concerned, he had survived the Burma Campaign and to us brought history alive, not always I now suspect by the official curriculum route.

F Wyatt, Pocklington.