Reluctantly to war
From Mr John Fraser Sir: Defending Ireland against the charge of declining `to take its place in civilisa- tion's vanguard against Hitlerism', Mr Barry Cusack (Letters, 28 October) cites a number of other powers that stayed or tried to stay out of the war. Strangely, he omits from his list the two biggest participants in the conflict, neither of which entered it from choice: the USSR, attacked without warning by its accomplice in the dismem- berment of Poland and de facto ally; and the USA, on which Germany, luckily for us all, declared war while it was reeling from the sudden and devastating blow inflicted by Japan at Pearl Harbor. Without that declaration, and given the strength of isola- tionist feeling at the time, it is surely proba- ble that the USA, with its hands more than full in the Pacific, would have stayed neu-
LETTERS
tral in the European theatre, just as the USSR joined in the fight against Japan only at the very end to get a share of the spoils.
John Fraser
Versoix, Switzerland
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