Letters: A Serb baffled

Sir: Is the British government creeping towards a ground war in Kosovo? In this year falls the hundredth anniversary of the commencement of the Anglo-Boer war in South Africa. The cause of that war was different but is the effect the same?

At the end of the last century Britain, the superpower of the day, thought it could win a quick war against the Boer republics. In fact it took 250,000 troops, marshalling resources from across the Empire and three long years to subdue (not defeat) a rag-tag army of 20,000 farmers. But the real tragedy was that it also took the lives of an estimated 20,000 Boer women and children and the deliberate destruction of property, farms and homes.

FRANCIS HAY

Banstead, Surrey