HOW I agree with John Tanner regarding your recent coverage of the 70th anniversary of the end of the war against Japan, even if the vast majority of those directly involved would have been in no position to appreciate the commemoration.

With respect to the admittedly utterly horrific manner in which the conflict was brought to a close, and without wishing to subscribe wholeheartedly to the dictum that all’s fair in love and war, it is difficult to accept, or even comprehend, the claim that “cruelty against soldiers and civilians is never justified”.

Today's Letters

Had it not been for the dropping of the two bombs it would surely have been cruel to our own people, both captured soldiers, including my uncle Dick, and interned civilians, to allow them to die, as many already had, of starvation, disease, active torture, execution and so on, not to mention combatants on both sides.

On balance, Hiroshima and Nagasaki must easily have been the lesser of two gigantic evils, though I am genuinely unsure to what extent this fact is relevant to the existence, and future of, far more potent, nuclear weapons.

DAVID DIMENT

Riverside Court,

Oxford