23 FEBRUARY 2002, Page 35

It's safer abroad

From Mr F.P.N. Lake Sir: Simon Heffer's article ('Cowardy custards in the home of the brave', 9 February) covering the Americans' panic over terrorism prompts me to make a point which I have not seen in the press.

How many American citizens, rightly appalled at the loss of some 3,000 lives in the dastardly Twin Towers and Pentagon attacks, realise that more than five times that number of their countrymen are murdered in the course of one year by other Americans? Is it not tragically comical that so many of the people over there are terrified at the idea of visiting the many countries incomparably safer than their own?

F.P.N. Lake

Aylesbury, Buckinghamshire