28 JULY 1979, Page 17

The boat people

Sir: As one who lived through the Thirties I read Nicholas Bethel] with understanding and sympathy. But surely the chief lesson learned then was that democratic idealism had no answer to the brutal despotism facing it. Neither Marx nor Jesus signified — Machiavelli turned out to be our man.

If the pending conference comes up with nothing more than the counting of heads of the survivors, it will amount to another Munich. For it will leave in the air the unresolved question: If the Vietnamese government learned its strategic lesson from !di Amin, how many more apt pupils are in the pipeline, ready to apply the 'final solution' of dispossession and mass exodus? Edgar Fond Pen rhyn Bay, Llandudno