Reaping the whirlwind
From Mr Royce MacGillivray Sir: Frank Johnson (Shared opinion, 1 March) convincingly argues that the Iraq crisis is not Munich or Suez, but Sarajevo in 1914. It is worth emphasising further that 1914 really represents two totally distinct things: (1) the beginning of a war of the Powers, which Johnson is right in thinking unlikely now, and (2) the beginning of a train of disturbances which included the rise of Soviet Marxism and Nazism, the second world war, the Holocaust, the end of the colonial empires, and the unleashing of a vast number of unbalanced activists such as Lenin and Himmler who would have lived obscurely in more peaceful times. Today, when we are not wholly out of (2), are we to start the whole business over again?
Royce MacGillivray
Romford, Essex
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