19 APRIL 2003, Page 31

Virtue and its rewards

From Sir Samuel Minim Sir: Alastair Campbell (Letters, 12 April) has performed a public service in reminding your readers of Gladstone's excellent principles of foreign policy: 'The great duty of a government is to soothe and tranquillise the minds of the people, not to set up false phantoms of glory. . . .

How much more inspiring and realistic these are than the vainglorious dreams of today's liberal imperialists and neoconservatives alike. If these are not the principles of the present Prime Minister, they ought to be.

Samuel Briton London W11