7 OCTOBER 1995, Page 34

Oh dear me, no

Sir: I assume it was Anne Applebaum's taste for the ironic which led her to claim in Pull of eastern menace', 23 September, that it was a 'moral drive' which 'settled the American frontier and sent Americans to two world wars'. Nothing to do with greed in the first example and waiting to be attacked in the second, of course.

D.J. Woodhead

29 Randalls Road, Leatherhead, Surrey