IN A few months’ time we shall be celebrating again the birth of the child Christ. We talk of peace on earth and the talk is utterly meaningless. The fact of the matter is: we have never actually conquered evil. By sheer good fortune convention had it that the 1939-1945 War was “won” by the opponents of evil. Had this “victory” been awarded to Germany and Japan, I personally would not have survived adolescence.

Six million Jews, the people of Christ, were exterminated as vermin. The United States and the Soviet Union chose to agree to build atom bombs and nuclear bombs, just so we could have a “peace” based on fear and deceit, a “peace” strictly limited to a few very wealthy countries.

These wealthy countries manufactured huge quantities of armaments to flood the rest of the world with unimaginable suffering. I was able to live a very happy life. I have been spared the terrible suffering that those in power inflict upon countless of millions.

I have never had to fear a knock on the door, although at the age of eight I opened the door to two men who took my dad away to the concentration camp. Those who are evil very cleverly coined the word “pacifism”.

They manoeuvred normal persons into forming a club: The Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, as though one was dealing with opinions. In the 1962 Cuba Missile Crisis, both Mr Kennedy and Mr Khrushchev agreed that human beings could be treated as vermin.

Both had no difficulty in finding “patriots”. People made bombs. They got paid for making bombs. That is money. Could those in power please behave like ordinary people?

HANS HAMMERSCHMIDT, Compass Close, Cowley, Oxford