Free Kaliningrad

Sir: Mark Galeotti was right to identify the exclave of Kaliningrad as a target for a strong western response to any use by Putin of a nuclear weapon against Ukraine (‘Nuclear options’, 8 October).

Perhaps it should be offered the chance of secession from Russia, not only to avoid destruction, but to secure a better future than Putin or any successor could offer. It was subject to terrible ethnic cleansing after its conquest in the second world war, which rules out its return to Germany. But it could lose its dismal association with Kalinin. Under its historic name of Königsberg, it could revert to its previous status as a Free City – within the EU and as part of Nato’s territory.

The West could offer a handsome payment for all the military facilities and weapons Putin has poured into the place: the personnel could be offered Nato pay and conditions or demobilisation.

Similar attractive offers of a Putin-free future might be made to other parts of his crumbling empire.

Richard Heller

London SE1

The present aggressor

Sir: Peter Hitchens states that ‘Russia is by no means the only European power with an aggressive past’ (Letters, 1 October). Quite. But she is the only European power with an aggressive present.

Lieutenant Colonel (Retired) Nick Ridout

Ingham, Lincolnshire

Woolly thinking

Sir: I share Charles Moore’s problem of a low temperature workplace (Notes, 8 October). I have some silk thermals but am keeping them in reserve while remembering the walker’s adage of ‘When your feet get cold, put on a hat’. The Thinsulate hat cost a mere £5. Sometimes visitors ask if I’m protecting myself from woodpeckers.

Patrick Benham-Crosswell

Hucking, Kent

Red kite menace

Sir: Paul Sargeantson is right about red kites (‘Killer in our midst’, 1 October): the birds are a menace. All RSPB members and the public in general should write to the society and copy in their MP, urgently requesting a review of the bird’s protection. My few acres of Oxfordshire have been devastated in just 20 odd years. We have lost virtually all of our songbirds, ground-nesting birds, frogs, toads, snakes: anything that moves. Kites snatch ducklings off the Thames, young hares off the Downs, thrushes and blackbirds off the lawn, clearing the countryside of all small creatures. As for the RSPB calling the kite reintroduction a ‘conservation success story’: total bunkum. The society ignores reality.

Bill Jackson

Goring-on-Thames, south Oxfordshire

Lay off Chesterton

Sir: Sam Leith insinuates that Giorgia Meloni is a Jew-hating fascist because she quoted G.K. Chesterton who, he tells us, was an anti-Semite and admirer of Mussolini (‘The prince of paradox’, 1 October). Undoubtedly, if Meloni had known this she would not have quoted Chesterton. She has said countless times that Mussolini’s 1938 anti-Semitic laws were ‘disgraceful’. She and her party robustly support Israel. The reason she quoted Chesterton is obvious: he was an English conservative like the two figures she quotes frequently and regards as an inspiration for own conservatism: J.R.R. Tolkien and Sir Roger Scruton.

But just how anti-Semitic was Chesterton? He denied it: ‘I am no anti-Semite. I respect and have the deepest regard for Jews, for their wonderful history, for their wonderful faith, and for their remarkably fine qualities, mental and moral’ (1911). ‘I will die defending the last Jew in Europe’ (1933). He was among the first to speak out against Hitler’s anti-Semitism. Sam Leith says Chesterton often talked about ‘the Jewish problem’ and ‘wanted British Jews to be deported to Palestine’. Yes, but not against their will. By ‘the Jewish problem’ he meant the Jews had, rather than were, a problem. He supported the Zionist cause and spent Christmas 1919 in Jerusalem as a guest of Zionists.

As for Mussolini, Chesterton did admire him to start with, like almost everyone outside Italy, including Churchill who called him ‘the Roman genius’. But Sam Leith is wrong about Chesterton ‘refusing to condemn Il Duce’s expedition into Abyssinia’. He was on holiday in 1935 when the invasion occurred and did condemn it on his return. Mussolini, whose main mistress was Jewish until the early 1930s, was not anti-Semitic while Chesterton was alive. He only became so in 1937 after his alliance with Hitler.

Nicholas Farrell

Ravenna

Theroux said it

Sir: Many thanks for Andrew Lycett’s review (Books, 8 October), about my biography of Jan Morris. In the interests of accuracy I would like to point out a mistake. The review states that Jonathan Raban described Morris as ‘looking like Tootsie’. However, it was in fact Paul Theroux who used this description in his travel book The Kingdom by the Sea, as outlined on p.336 of my book Jan Morris: Life from Both Sides.

Paul Clements

Ravenhill, Belfast

Joy of smoking

Sir: Rod Liddle reveals how smoking ‘gave me great pleasure’ (‘Giving up smoking was an absolute doddle’, 8 October). My father, who fought from the beaches of southern Sicily up to Monte Cassino before returning to Europe, often referred to smoking in his letters home. On 29 April 1944, two weeks before the final attack on Cassino, he wrote: ‘I am glad to hear you have posted me a few more cigars Pop… the cigar smoking season is just starting for me. It is unpleasant to smoke a cigar in the rain, but after the evening meal when it is dusk and the sky cloudless, that is the time.’

Keith McLardy

Bristol

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