Saving Sarajevo / Letter: High price of not standing up to dictators

THE Independent has received more than 1,500 letters from readers in response to its call for Western military action to save Sarajevo, 99 per cent of them in support of this newspaper's initiative. We print one letter below. A further selection appears on page 10.

Dear Sir

I am old enough to have become politically aware in the mid-1930s, and hence to have spent most of my twenties in uniform.

The situation in Bosnia now is not, of course, equivalent to that in Europe between 1939 and 1945, but there is a very distinct similarity between Ethiopia and Spain in 1935-36 and the Balkans now. In particular, both were/are the victims of power-hungry dictators, and both were/are being sacrificed by timorous spectator governments. Not many of us, perhaps, remember the shameful farce of 'non- intervention' then, but most of us know about what it and similar policies led to a few years later. Do we wish it to be repeated?

KW MOODY

Ladybridge, Bolton