LETTERS; Tigers, sheep and wolves

IT IS ironical that in this week of all weeks one reads of the wide currency given to the slogan "It is better to have lived one day as a tiger than a thousand years as a sheep" (Quotes of the Week, 20 August). On entering Taranto harbour in September 1942, almost the first large building we saw bore the massive black lettering: "Meglio vivere un giorno di leone che cento anni di peccora". It was Mussolini's favourite exhortation to his Fascists.

Noel Currer-Briggs

Ely, Cambridgeshire