25 MARCH 1978, Page 17

Official tidiness?

Sir: I wonder if anyone else has been struck with the horrid suspicion that one of the main reasons for delivering all those Russians into the embrace of that great and good man Joseph Stalin was pure administrative convenience? In other words a final —oops, sorry, I mean definitive —solution of the post-war refugee problem for some two millions.

No wonder those responsible are not exactly tearing their hair out in public. Since when has the good administrator felt the need to suffer from a guilty conscience? Alex de Jonge New College, Oxford