The origins of the disintegration of the Greek economy and, in effect, Greek civil society, are far more complex than either David Diment or Keith Mitchell suppose (ViewPoints, March 8).

Pre-Second World War dictatorship followed by brutal Italian and German occupation, followed in their turn by a bloody civil war, which in part can be laid at Churchill, Atlee and Truman’s door, then decades of division and restriction which led to the oppressive regime of the Colonels and, thereafter, further instability, have to be taken into account.

It's simply unhistorical and glib to write off Greece and the Greeks as a nation of tax-evaders and spendthrifts; and it could be argued that, of all European countries, the UK does, in the light of what Churchill set in motion on Christmas Day 1944, have a moral obligation to help Greece in any way possible.

The same could be said of the US, whose post-war interventionism, including direct military intervention, meant that by the end of the civil war in 1949, Greece was in a worse political, economic and humanitarian situation than it had been at the end of occupation in 1944.

Another matter of history: on July 31, 1942, a number of humanitarians met in the Old Library of the University and set up the Oxford Committee for Famine Relief (later to be named Oxfam), with the specific aim of setting up a supply system of aid for occupied Greece.

These people were motivated by compassion, as it might be hoped we all are in relation to those less fortunate than ourselves.

BRUCE ROSS-SMITH Bowness Avenue Headington Oxford